Pat's 30th

So it took 10 days to see the surgeon. We were seeing Dr Cunningham who I sort of remembered from my first nursing job at the hospital. I remembered that he was nice and mellow and always treated the nurses kindly (hugely important in my eyes). I told my boss, Dr D, who we were seeing, and his response, "he's the best...the only one I'd want cutting on me," made me feel relieved, and much less irritated about waiting 10 days to see him. Somewhere in the middle of these 10 days was Pat's 30th birthday. It was really hard for me to have all of this over shadowing his day. 30 is a big deal and Pat is such a treasure and I just wanted his birthday to be free of worry.

Before any of this started, I had considered having a party for him. I had planned on including all our friends, and then Pat's mom mentioned including some family as well and offered her home and backyard for the party. Once all of this started, Pat said he preferred to spend the day with just close family and friends, and no party. And so we spent some time with his parents and sister and some time with my parents over the weekend. On his actual birthday I decided to make some of his favorite foods and invited our bestfriends Abby and Brian over. I took the afternoon off to prepare. We had a wonderful dinner and I even made his very favorite chocolate cake with home made vanilla ice cream. So very Martha of me. When I look at the pictures from this night, all I can see is how pale and tired Pat looks. He doesn't look like his usual self to me.

The following weekend we went out with our whole group and celebrated Pat and Abby's birthday (they are 4 days apart). We had Abby and Brian fill everyone in before we arrived just so it wouldn't be weird if we had to leave early. Our friends were nervous but hopeful and provided a good distraction for us that night. Right during the middle of dinner but broke a fever and had to leave the table for a short bit, and I was happy everyone already knew and didn't have to ask a bunch of questions. A few days later, Abby posted her pictures and I was again focused on how Pat just didn't look like himself.

During this time Pat was taking naps everyday. He was going to bed early. He was still experiencing the night sweats and random fevers. I was preparing myself for the news that he was sick and trying to think of how we were going to handle the months of chemo that were coming. I was also trying to enjoy every single second with him that I could before we faced that. Being away from him was agony. It was all I could do to go to work every day. Other than work, I didn't want to spend one minute away from him. Not that I was convinced he was going to die, because honestly, I never considered that. I just knew that chemo was going to be incredibly difficult, and I wanted to have as much fun with him as I could before that started.