He loves to sit with me

He says he knows the moment he knew he first loved me.  He says it was the summer I was going into 7th grade, and he was going into 8th.

My uncle had died and we stopped at my younger brother's baseball game on the way home from the funeral.

He happened to be there.  He was always at the baseball field.

He says he watched me walk across the ball-field in my bare feet and short purple mini-dress.  He remembers how the dress was tied in the back.  He remembers the colors in the dress.  He remembers my long, dark, curly hair falling over my face as I watched my steps in my bare feet.

He remembers I stood at the edge of the ball field and watched the ball game as I felt a little out of place being there in a dress.  He didn't know it was much better for me to stand there alone than to stay in the car with my parents.

We had grown up in the same small community, but I'm not sure we were even aware of each other until Junior High.  Our three small rural village schools consolidated into one larger school at the start of seventh grade.  There were more buses in that small parking lot after school than any of us had seen together before in our lives.

I was sitting, leaning up against steps with some new friends I had met that day, when a tall, skinny kid came over and asked me if I wanted to "go with" Scott Gerwig.

I was totally confused, and not quite sure who this tall skinny kid was, or who 'he' was.  Being greatly encouraged by my friends, I said "maybe".  The tall skinny kid then said "he saved a seat for you on the bus".

The bus routes for our school district were long and laborious.  My basic bus ride home from that day forward was approximately an hour long.  The buses at the Junior High would take you to the high school where everyone changed buses to get on the bus taking you home.

This busing system created a moment of time when the twenty minute bus ride from the Junior High to the High School  was nothing but insane pubescence.  It was a welcome time of no high school kids flaunting their superior strength stomping down smaller weaker ones.  It was loud immature boys making stupid jokes.  It was loud immature girls pretending and creating drama.  They packed us in like sardines and you prayed that someone saved you a seat.  The bus ride to the junior high that morning had been an eye-opening education for me after the uber-controlled safety of all my elementary school bus rides.

And here I was sitting on a bus with a boy that wanted to kiss me on the lips at the end of the bus ride.

I didn't let him kiss me on the lips the whole three months we "went together" that year.

(Ok, there was the one time we sat together at the fall dance that I let him kiss me.)

I hardly looked at him, I was so shy.  We barely talked.

But he tells me he was smitten.

I asked him a while ago why he stayed with me that first time we were so young together - he was a year older, a year 'more worldly', talkative, popular with his friends and always playing sports; and I didn't talk, didn't interact a whole lot, looking back I could not have seemed all that interesting, yet we were considered "a couple" as you could only be in Junior High - and I asked him why he was ok with that.

He told me he just liked to sit with me.  

***

He told me the other day as he was starting laundry, and I was apologizing for being an insanely stupid person for not having that done, he told me that he "liked to take care of me".

That's a far cry from our early married years.  Not that he was negligent, but I married a 'jock'.  We were at ball games sometimes three and four nights a week.

It's not a great environment for young kids, that often.  They play in the sand and stones in front of the bleachers that old men spit in before climbing up and sitting down.  The same stone and sand that dogs peed in while sitting with their owners.  The sand and stones that sometimes didn't get washed off with rain for weeks.

We rarely had a washer and dryer that worked in tandem.  Those days, the laundry duties were all mine.  When the dryer would quit again, I hung out loads and loads and loads of laundry, begging them to dry.

One of our children had such sensitive skin that she could not wear Pampers, could not wear Luvs, nor Huggies, without developing open sores.  I washed loads of diapers daily - twice in hot water to make sure there were no lingering allergens - and would dry them over the heating vents of our house.  Someone once gave me a bag of cloth diapers and I almost kissed them, as it meant I had more diapers in the rotation, and could maybe get to work without having to start the second load to soak.

Through the lens of that viewpoint, our lives have changed dramatically.  After spending lifetimes at ball fields and gyms, we rarely go now.  We don't watch it on tv all that much.

Our laundry barely makes three loads a week.

Scott was brought up short several years ago when friends brought pictures of all the parties our church group had done when our kids were little.  As we looked over them, I would be in some of the pictures - always alone.

He asked "where was I?"  and I looked at him sideways, because he never quite realized really how much he missed when he was coaching.  He never quite realized how many times I went 'alone' to any event.  How many times he missed his kids' events, even though he tried like crazy to get to a lot of them.

As time went on, our work schedules were not similar very often.  I usually attended my events alone, he attended his alone, and it was all ok.

***

After our children grew up and left home and we went through the usual post-children-marital-wrestling that most couples do when faced with the fact that their job of nurturing and helping and promoting and just being there for their children almost non-stop was done.

We were suddenly dropped into a different world.  We grieved our child-less home.  We had so loved being parents and enjoyed the pleasure of young ones in the home.

Then we discovered, we really enjoyed being with each other again.

We enjoyed gardening together.  We enjoyed trying new restaurants together.  He loved grocery stores, and I would tag along and pick out new fruits to try while he excitedly spent a whole paycheck when swiping his card at the register.

After too many years of too many stresses and hurts and agonies and pain and sorrows, we learned the art of relaxing.

We would garden, make a pretty spot, and sip coffee there in the morning-hours before leaving for work.

He loved to watch sunsets and would beg me to come sit with him in what I aptly named "mosquito-park".  He didn't mind when I would go out in 90 degree heat with long pants, socks, shoes, long sleeves, and a hat trying to avoid bites.  Those pesky little creatures for some reason loved me, not him so much.

I looked like a homeless bag lady, kind of killing the mood of summer nights, wine, relaxation and bliss, but he didn't care as long as I would "just sit with him" long into the dark.

***

He took me to my first day of doctor's appointments at the Stefanie Spielman Center / OSU in Columbus.

He sat with me through the different appointments that day, watching each doctor examine me, watching each one tell me news that fell like bricks on top of us, watching me ask questions and receive answers that we didn't really completely understand at the time, but that I understood enough to know I was in a bit of trouble.  

He sat with me in my robe in some of the waiting rooms as all the other husbands were doing with their loved ones as well.  He held my hand.

He kept lifting my chin so I would look at him when he talked to me.  He knew he couldn't let me go too deep into my 'head-down-thinking-mode' that day or I might never come back out of myself.

When they asked me to get into a study and told me it would be four days a week for the next four to five weeks, I looked at him knowing I needed the study drug, but knowing I also needed a driver.

We had timed our drive that morning and found we live one hour and forty minutes away.

He never blinked, never wavered, never questioned, never hesitated.

He said we could be there.  Four days a week chemo at the main campus OSU/James for the next five weeks.

He has a job.  He teaches.  Every day.  He doesn't call off on sick days except for when he is really, really sick.   He had some sick days saved up, but as I quickly tallied up the days in my head that this treatment was going to require the next six months, I knew he was going to miss too much work.

***

He sat at the foot of my bed in the Phase One Study Drug wing at OSU/James while they brought in a caddy full of blood tubes and prepared my arms for the onslaught of needle sticks for the next five weeks.

He hates needles.  I've sat by his bedside making him look at me while he was poked and stuck multiple times the past ten years for all of his surgeries and illnesses.

He watched as they put that first stint in each arm to open and shut for my blood draws that day.  And we both watched with an odd knowing that after the first needle stick, our lives would never be the same.

Not ever again.

We had no idea how much everything would change.

That first day, he sat at the foot of my bed, we chatted with the nurses, I openly admired their ability to pop up my veins that were always a bit reluctant when doing all of my thyroid blood draws, and then they started the blood pulls.

A nurse entered the room with large syringes and a few bags, starting an IV.

Then they brought in that first bag of chemo.  I was sitting up in the bed watching their every move, watching them prepare the drugs and drips.  I don't think anyone can ever get themselves ready for a treatment that will alter their life in a few day's time.

I know I couldn't.

I had never cried with medical issues - I get frustrated, I get irritated, I get tired of them, but no tears.  After the pre-treatment drugs were started, the chemo drip began.

There was one quiet tear on my cheek.  I looked over at Scott sitting quietly at the foot of the bed in that small room, and there was one quiet tear on his cheek.  We both watched, then we both looked away.

We sat together in that room and watched, then realized we couldn't watch any longer.

We were forever changed.

***

The Bible says that when you marry, you should become "one flesh".

We might have messed up a lot of things in our lives, but we have accomplished this at least.

When he hurts, I hurt.  When I hurt, he hurts.

He took off most of those first five weeks and stayed with me in Columbus.  He had understanding employers that could see his deep pain, and knew that he needed to be there with me, and they let him take that time.

He took off the following Wednesdays every week to take me for my weekly chemo treatments.  We became best friends with our chemo nurses.  We loved them and loved how they treated us and answered our every question.

He sat with me and hugged me and cried with me every time I was denied my chemo treatment because of low blood counts.  He took over the job of listening to the medical instructions and explanations, and although he didn't do it as well as I used to do it, he would take notes and make sure I called in on the correct days, took my meds correctly, understood how to protect my blood counts by staying away from germs.

He quickly learned that my worst day after chemo was Friday, and took that day off also to care for me, to make sure I didn't fall, didn't forget my nausea meds, didn't have to crawl back to bed unassisted.  

The man that didn't care a whole lot about the medical field, quickly learned terms and conditions that were suddenly important - he learned that I had difficult reactions to the steroids they pumped into me each time, and he learned to watch for that steroid withdrawal that was always so difficult for me approximately thirty hours after treatment.

He would notice my tremors and shaking and would get me into bed quickly and cover me with all the blankets he could find in the house while my body shook with iceland-cold and fever while the steroids leaving my body allowed the full impact of the three days of chemo to rise up and slap me hard.

He listened so closely to my doctor and chemo nurses that he timed my oral chemo for each of those three days almost to the very minute.

We both dreaded the extra Carbo chemo treatment every three weeks that was added to the once a week Taxal and the three-day-per-week-chemo-regimen.  As if the other chemos were not enough, Carbo felt like a three-pronged rake had been dragged through my intestinal track.  I was pretty sure there was not any lining left in my mouth, esophagus, stomach, intestines - not any lining anywhere for any protection from poison rushing through you.

The last couple of months of that first set of chemo seemed like time stopped.  It seemed like there was nothing in life other than spending our days injecting, ingesting, and recovering.  That's all we did.

I started to feel my feet fry.  Then my hands.  And I was pretty sure my brain was on fire, burning.   They all felt like there were hot needles being poked in and sometimes steps felt like I was only pushing those needles in further.

For the first time in my life, my steps became uncertain and painful.  For the first time in my life, I came down stairs one at a time, clinging to a hand rail so I wouldn't fall.  For the first time in my life, I had to stop halfway up the steps and sit down and rest, as my red blood cells were screaming for oxygen with any little exertion.

Stairs are especially difficult when your red blood cells bottom out.

He would find me sometimes at the top of the stairs laying back where I just needed to stop and rest for a bit to not push my heart too hard when it was taxed, and he would sit down beside me.

He would watch me closely the weeks that I missed treatments - once I had to miss two weeks of treatments and get a blood transfusion to bring up my sagging red blood count - and he watched me come miraculously back to life, miraculously begin to smile and joke and laugh again, miraculously be able to start simple tasks again - and he would walk in the door after work and smile really big as he listened to my too loud music, too loud tredmill-walking-bragging, too much life all of a sudden.
He would be so happy, but then he would subtly remind me that I had to go back.  

He would never let me quit.  Not that I wanted to quit, but when I had forgotten how good it felt to feel better, I found that I was reluctant to submit myself again to the great pit of awfulness that my chemo regimen swung me into.

I finished that chemo regimen in June, had surgery in July, and at my follow up appointment with my oncologist the beginning of August, she told me that she wanted me to do three more months of chemo.

We both felt like we had not heard her correctly.  We both felt like we had just been punched in the gut.  We both were not sure how we were going to get through this.

My body felt weak and ravaged.  I was pretty sure my bones and teeth were hollow, and that there was not one inch of muscle mass left within me.  My hair had just begun to grow back.

He sat there beside me in that exam room, he looked at me, I looked at him, and we told her we would be there.

We agreed with her, and he scheduled his days off again.  He had very few left, but insisted that he could - and would - drive me, sit with me and take care of me again for this chemo go-around every three weeks.

I secretly thought it would not be that difficult after what I had been through the first six months of that year, that every three weeks sounded easy after doing chemo previously for three days each week.

I started the chemo, and it didn't seem that bad.  Then, I contracted every germ within a five mile radius.  He took care of me and sat with me for two weeks.  He ran to the pharmacy for me day after day after day.

He missed some work again.

He took me to the second of four chemo cycles.  It hit me a little harder, but still I didn't think it was that bad, then again, I came down with a bronchial infection.  He took care of me for two weeks again.

My body seemed to be all spent out.  It seemed to have nothing left of any value to counteract anything.

I didn't think I could go back for the last two treatments.  I argued that this round of chemo had seemed almost "optional" and that it probably wouldn't make that much difference if I didn't finish it.

Every time I thought of those last two chemo treatments, my body shuddered.

I did not want to go back.

He sat with me, listened to me, held my hand, and let me agonize over it, but we both knew that I would be going back.

I lost thirty pounds.  He made sure I was getting enough calories each day to exist.  I had no appetite, he would run to the grocery any time I said anything sounded good.

But nothing sounded good at the end, nothing tasted good.

Some days, he would bring me a plate of food from the kitchen that I couldn't stand to be in, filled with food that I couldn't stand to smell, couldn't stand to look at, couldn't stand to think about chewing, and he would sit with me, and talk with me, and I would eat it, then he would take the plate and clean up the kitchen, keeping my nausea as low as possible.

I never thought I could be that sick that I couldn't do simple tasks without gagging.  He never complained, never thought I was being weak - instead he reminded me of how strong I had been all my life, and how I was going to be strong again.

***

I started that round of chemo September 7th.  His gall bladder started to torture him in October landing him in the ER a couple of times.

He finally had it out in November, but was still vomiting.  He needed more hospitalizations, more surgery in December.

Our son stepped in to help when he was hospitalized.

We were miserable to be around.  All we talked about was nausea, vomiting, getting better, eating whatever we could to try and feel better, get better.

We had determined to spend that Thanksgiving alone and quiet and apart from food neither one of us was craving.

He told me he was thankful to be sitting in our living room together on that day of Thanks.  Even though we both felt weak and fatigued and just downright sorry, we were thankful to be together.

***

By the end of my almost year to that point of treatments, we were both spent and our health was poor.  For both of us.

By the end of December, I finally started to feel better.  I was not hungry at all, and still had to count calories to make sure I was eating enough each day, but I felt better.

I started my radiation in January, and decided to stay in Columbus each week at my daughters' family homes, and came home on weekends.

There was a common question at each of my follow up appointments, each time I ran into one of my chemo nurses on the elevator, each time I had a blood draw or port flush - the same question - "where's Scott?"

They looked at us like we looked at us - like we were one unit.  One flesh.

He had been there every step of the way.  He had listened to every difficult conversation with every doctor and nurse.  He had guided me when my brain wouldn't work any longer due to chemo and I literally could not find my way out of some buildings.  He had understood what it was felt like to be abandoned by almost everyone, and comforted me in the loneliest time of my life.  He realized he was my lone rock, and he stood that test beyond most men's endurance.

***

With him being sick and using all of his sick days for my treatments - he could not miss any school for a few months, until he had built up sick time again.

I drove to my radiation treatments each day, gloried in making new friends in the waiting area each day, and felt like I was somehow, miraculously stepping back into life.

I told him about my new friend that was finishing her radiation treatment and how I was going to go back to the center later that day as they had a bell-ringing ceremony to signify your end of treatment.

Knowing that he had no sick days nor any other kind of time off available, I didn't even hint that he could or should be there on my last day of treatment.

A few days before I was released, I met with my radiation-oncologist and when the appointment was over, I bolted to my car.  I got in, sat down and sobbed.

Then I called him. I kept using Starbucks napkins to wipe my nose and when he finally answered his phone, I could barely talk.

He was instantly alarmed, and asked me what had happened with my appointment - I sobbed out the words - "she said I'm done.  She said I only have two more days and I'm done."

I could hear him taking a long time to answer.

His voice wavered and he said "you're done.  You're almost there, sweets, you're almost done".

When I got dressed the day after  my last treatment, I walked out into a waiting room surprisingly full of people -- all people that are dearest to me - dearer than anything on earth.

My three children, and their families were there.  They had pulled their kindergartners out of school.  They were all jumping and yelling "SURPRISE!" and I cried.  And cried.

And then I walked over to that guy that had planned all of this, and didn't have any days off left to take, and still he showed up on the most important day of my life in a long time.

We all went out to a lunch he and my family had planned, then he asked our son to drive his car home, separately from his wife and children.

I protested, knowing how hard it is to drive that far with small children.

He looked at me, told me he had planned this out, our son and his wife were willing, and that he was going to sit beside me on this last drive home.

***

I've had a difficult case of chemo brain, and it hasn't been easy feeling like I have lost parts of me that were valuable.

My body is different.

I no longer dye my hair, giving my body a chance to recover from the overabundance of chemicals it has endured the last couple of years.

He still looks at me like he used to when he sat beside me on that bus.

He tells me it doesn't matter, that in his eyes I am still the strong-willed, strong-bodied girl that he knew over three decades ago.

He says that for the first time in our lives, he has taken care of me - instead of it being the other way around - and he likes to do it.

Many evenings find us sitting together - whether in the garden relaxing with a glass of wine or in our cozy living room or, even in the kitchen now - we are still sitting together.

He has worked hard to usher me back into life, back into living, back into 'being' even though I feel like parts of me are missing.

I hate to go to rooms full of people that know us, as every time I look around at least a third of them are sneaking looks at my chest to see if I wore a bra tonight.  I loathe those looks so much, that I often dress in an old baggy shirt to distract any guessing games with anyone.

If I'm around him, around my family, I don't wear a bra - it's too painful.  They don't care, don't sneak looks - it's just me now, and they accept it like they are professionals at being around people that have lost body parts.

Others, not so much.

He says he doesn't care.  We know why they look, why they are curious, we were curious once as well.  But it doesn't make it any easier.

That's difficult, but more difficult is the parts of my brain that got fried, and don't seem to want to come back.  The stacks of books around our home that I have read and loved, haunt me now.  I can't read more than two paragraphs and have it make sense.

I don't have a running checkbook rolling in my brain any longer.  If you would have asked me our bank balance any given day, any given hour, I could have told you.

Scott called me a couple of months ago when I was staying in Columbus and said "I know you're having a good time with the girls, but you do realize you have spent almost $300?"

My mouth fell open - I had stopped at JoAnne's, eaten lunch out, bought a few lattes, picked up some needed items from Costco - nothing that was over $30 a stop - but it had added up fast, and I had not even been the least bit concerned.

Not until he called did I even think about it.

If you know us, knowing that Scott is now the financially responsible person in our marriage tells you much about where my brain is.

I can't add or subtract or multiply or divide like I did.  I am practicing constantly, and yet it will not hold it's place in my brain - as soon as I am done practicing - it is gone again.

I have what seem to me like large portions of memory missing.  I don't remember my kids childhoods as much.  I don't remember what I watched on tv last week.  It's gone in a way that is different from just not remembering it in a scatter-brained sort of way - it's gone.

I've watched movies twice and not realized it until Scott asks me why I wanted to watch that again.

***

He has a simple faith in a big God that walks him through much of this.  He feels that God gave us each other all those years ago - and that it's our job no matter how difficult the journey - to walk it and to steady each other, lean on each other, and to bolster each other as much as we can.

He thinks God told him that I was going to get through this.  He thinks God has His hand on us now.

He sits beside me and reminds me that I will continue to get better. That one day I will be strong again.

And to be honest with you, I'm not sure if I would be here if he had not been beside me this whole journey.

I say that honestly and with all prejudice and all due respect to my awesome doctors and awesome nurses and awesome treatment plan - I am not totally sure I would be here if it were not for him sitting with me through the whole thing.

That's why I nominate him.  I could fill a volume on his patience, his love, his undying confidence that all will be good, I could tell you all of that, but I tell you the most important - he was there sitting beside me the whole time.