How cancer saved me #1

My Cancer journey actually has a different story that ties in with it at the start. Rewind time to November 2005. I was a married, healthy,  22 year old energetic man who was in GM mechanics school. I had got married young (christian background, why else would someone get married that young..) and I had just found out my wife had been sleeping around on me while I was away at school. (This all ties into how I got cancer)….Not just, I got drunk and “accidentally” fucked a guy, but fell in love with a 37 year old man, that also had a wife and 4 kids. My wife had drove up to where I went to school (2 hrs away from our house) to tell me she had been suspended from work for “inappropriate behavior” by one of her managers. Knowing full well what that meant as we had had a very turbulent 6 months prior to me going away for school. She had started this job just 8 months or so before and she had started to change, she was partying and hanging out with people I didn’t know, I didn’t drink at the time so I wanted no part of the partying. We had both grown up in christian households and the idea of going out partying when we should be at home being married didn’t seem appropriate. I know that is fucking ridiculous now but I was young, dumb, and brainwashed by religion. I didn’t know what getting married meant at the time, what do we do now? We didn’t want kids just yet, thank fucking God we didn’t drag little humans into our mess, we needed to grow up and mature before having kids and we knew that. I had been working at getting my Journeyman ticket in mechanics right after high school and my wife just did random jobs here and there up to that point. In the months prior to me going away for school we had became extremely disconnected and were basically roommates, we didn’t even talk much, I slept in the spare bedroom, we hadn’t had sex in months and the last few times we did it was going through the motions, like we were prostitutes. A couple weeks before I left for school I told my wife I was going to pick up my snowmobile, which was 3 hours away and was just going to stay at that friends house for the night, she just said, “OK”. I was about 40 minutes from our house when I realized I had forgot my wallet, “SHIT!”. I turned around and went to get it, when I pulled up to my house I seen a truck in the driveway that wasn’t ours. I go into the backyard, as we used that as our entrance, I seen my wife in a skimpy bikini, suntanning with her tits half out and a guy she works with sitting with her, they both were very startled, and their faces were red. She said, “this is ‘Tom’, his daughter is at a birthday party a couple blocks away and he stopped by to say hi”, I just responded, “OK”, and went in the house and grabbed my wallet and left. Human beings aren’t stupid, you can FEEL energy in situations like that, I knew something was going on deep down, but I kept it stuffed down inside, if I didn’t address it, it didn’t exist, right? I did tell my friend all about it when I got to their house before I got my snowmobile. I told them every detail and how it felt gross seeing them in the backyard, there was an instant gross feeling. Before I went to school a couple weeks later, I sat my wife down and told her we need to figure our situation out, that I couldn’t keep living like this. I told her to do some thinking and I will too and that when I come home in 2 months I wanted to sit down and discuss what our immediate future looks like, she agreed but I couldn’t help thinking that she didn’t take me seriously, like she was saying “yeah yeah, whatever”, like she couldn’t wait until I left. A few weeks into school I came home for the weekend to do some yard work before the snow came, she barely said hi when I came in and then went out with friends shortly after I got there. It’s pretty painful when your wife acts like she hates you and you don’t know why,  you don’t even have a clue what to do or how to express yourself, where do you even start? That weekend, at 2 different times I went for 2 drives by myself to cool down, I felt like if I stayed there I was going to beat the shit out of her, she was yelling at me, calling me names, putting me down, and I didn’t know how to react or express myself. It’s not that I’m a bad person or I like beating up people weaker then me but in society men get taught that dominance and violence is how you get things done, to get your ultimate point across, especially in my up bringing. I have never really been an aggressive person, so I can usually identify when my anger is getting ahead of me and I need to step away. After that weekend, on my way back to school I realized I don’t know how this can be fixed or where to start, can we even work it out? I didn’t even want to go back, this situation was so stressful to me, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I kind of felt lied to, we definitely paint a picture of happily ever after when we get married, I felt like I had fucked up, why did I get married so young? All things I was able to sort out and identify over the years to come.

I obviously felt hurt, betrayed, lied to, torn up, all the usual emotional feelings that come with feeling of being replaced. I actually was surprised to realize I was actually getting physical pain too, I had chest and stomach pains daily for the first couple weeks after finding out. It’s interesting how the human body works, our emotional pain is very much tied to our physical bodies.

The city my ex-wife and I lived in was small, and everyone seemed to know what was going on under my roof before I did. I felt like a complete fucking idiot, a fool, very embarrassed, and that everyone was laughing at me. So, what I did was I drove to this guy’s house that my wife had apparently fallen in love with. My mindset at the time was, I just didn’t want people thinking I was a total bitch, I grew up getting bullied and abused in elementary school and relentlessly by my stepfather, so this time I stood up. So, I went to his front door and 2 of his daughters answered the door, I looked at them and then saw him in the background and just said we need to talk outside” and I walked away, to his driveway. Basically, long story short I asked him what was going on with him and my wife, he said “obviously if you’re here you already know”. I told him “I want you to be a man and tell me to my face”, and that I wanted to hear it from him what was going on and why. He apologized several times, said that it was just a fling, that he didn’t care for her, and that she was falling for him and wanted him to leave his wife. I told him to tell my wife it’s over and to leave her alone if he wasn’t going to take it further. My wife had told me they’re in love and he’s leaving his wife, it was kind of left at that for the time being. Before I left his house that day, I told him if he doesn’t tell his wife what’s going on, I will. Well, I ended up calling his wife a couple weeks later and telling her what was going on between them because they kept on seeing each other secretly. She started crying and yelling at me, she got really angry, saying there’s no way that’s true. I told her I don’t go around calling peoples wives and making false accusations, I got mad at her for not believing me. I understand her now, she was in the denial stage, the one I was in months prior, I can’t fault her for that, sometimes when we hear truth we don’t want, we lash out.  Originally, after a couple weeks of seeing if we could fix and heal this speed bump in our relationship, we decided to get divorced. At the time I wanted to try and fix things, solely because of insecurity and abandonment issues I wasn’t ready to face. I don’t think she ever did want to fix it; she was doing what her family thought she should. She told me shortly after we decided to end it that she never did love me, she just loved my popularity, energy, and charisma in grade 11 and 12 when we met. I respect her for ending a relationship that didn’t serve her anymore, I don’t think it was handled properly but we rarely handle things properly when we are going through mixed feelings and tough times, no one died, and we are all better today because of it. So, I thank her in my own head to this day for doing that. It might sound fucked up, but change is good as long as you grow, and boy oh boy did I!!

So, what does this have to do with me getting cancer? When I found out about the affair, I asked her to move out and to be out of our house by the time I returned from school. A few weeks later I came back from school, and I hadn’t talked to anyone from work or from where I lived, I had assumed rumors were swirling. It is hard to even understand it at this point, as this was before mass amounts of communication even happened, everyone didn’t have cell phones, text messaging wasn’t even a thing. I had a work Christmas party to go to and I was nervous to go alone, and I didn’t know if everyone had heard what was going on in my household at that point, so I had asked my wife to come with me to the party. When we got there everyone was awkward around me and made small talk, which was unusual with me at work, so I figured everyone knew what was going on. My wife ended up getting really drunk and calling the guy she was having an affair with to come get her. My best work friend pulled me aside at the Christmas party and told me my wife was having an affair and that his brother works with her, and rumors had been going around for months and that everyone at the dealership I worked at heard about it too. Well, I guess I can stop pretending everything in my life is normal I thought. It’s pretty fucking embarrassing to go to your work Christmas party with your wife, trying to pretend your life is “fine”, then finding out everyone knows she’s been sleeping around, and asking me why I brought her there. At the same time, I felt supported by my work community because no one seemed to want her there and some people seemed disgusted with her, which made me feel great at the time. After the Christmas party incident, I took a step back from my wife, we lived separate, we didn’t talk, deep down I knew it was over because I felt better than I ever had with her out of my life.

A month later it was Christmas and I spent it with my 2 older brothers and one of my younger sisters, my only full biological siblings. We went to my grandparents for 2 days and my dads for another day, the 4 of us connected better then we ever had. It was a awesome few days, it was the first time I started stepping into my own shoes and felt free of the life I had previously created but didn’t want anymore.

After Christmas I had to go back to Estevan to work for another week before I started school again in Regina. I felt a huge weight off me after splitting with my wife, I was more joyful and happy to be alive for those 2 months, even though I was in school. A week into school my oldest brother Dallas, came down for the weekend, we were WWF style wrestling and I had found a lump in my shoulder area, when I raised my arm it was more into my armpit. I got told to get it checked out and I brushed it off, as would any 22 year old healthy, bulletproof, young man. By mid January of 2006, the lump got noticeably bigger and was causing me some discomfort & pain. After school one day, after having decided I had nothing better to do, I went go get it checked out with our free health care, what was the harm? I got told by the doctor in the walk-in clinic that I should probably go to the hospitals ER. I was kind of annoyed as I had just wanted her to tell me it was nothing to worry about. However, something deep down told me it was serious, so off I went to the ER hoping they would tell me it’s nothing.

The next couple weeks I would go on to spend probably 100 or more hours in the ER and other departments getting numerous tests and seeing different doctors. There was so much repeat info and duplicate tests. I was always alone in this, I felt alone a lot of my life and so it made me uncomfortable to have people around when I was most vulnerable. It was the way I learned, subconsciously, to deal with those situations was to push people away. I did have a blessing in disguise though, the ER doctor that was assigned to me was new from school and was very thorough. She eventually got me sent through the system and departments as they tried to figure out what was wrong with me (I had zero symptoms, just a lump). My doctor ended up calling me on a Wednesday evening and telling me I have to come see her right away. I was obviously upset, and knowing what that meant, I tried to get her to tell me over the phone so I didn’t have to face her, and again, hide my emotions as I had been doing for the last couple months.

I went into the ER department at the hospital and my doctor took me into a small private room to tell me I had a rare and aggressive form of non hodgkins lymphoma, called Burkitts lymphoma. Deep down my soul told her “I know”- but instead I asked if I should cancel my appointment for a haircut. Even though I knew deep down, it was still hard to hear a truth like that, no matter what we tell ourselves. I just didn’t know how to respond, and figured humor was my best bet, which luckily, stayed with me my entire battle with cancer. I then picked up the phone and proceeded to cry my eyes out as I told my oldest brother, and then asked him to tell our family, as I didn’t want to talk about it yet. Then I crawled into bed and covered my head with the blankets and wanted to disappear forever and never face anyone again. It was an emotional and exhausting roller coaster ride that I had been on for the last 2 months. I didn’t really know or understand at the time whether I had just been given a death sentence or curse. Not too long later I found out being diagnosed with cancer was one of my greatest gifts I have ever got…

Author: cancerboy55

I am on a journey of teaching, learning, and listening. View all posts by cancerboy55