Pat's Story-From the start

Sometime during the week after Father's Day, Pat came down with a sinus infection. He took a week-long round of fairly strong antibiotics, and after a couple days was still having sinus symptoms. His allergist said it was quite common for sinus infections to be tough to treat so she prescribed him an even stronger antibiotic that he took for 10 days. Finally his sinus symptoms seemed better.

Fast forward to the weekend of the 4th of July. I notice that Pat is having night sweats, but hello it is July so who isn't right? However, over the course of the next few weeks, Pat begins to have fevers randomly throughout the day and continues with pretty intense night sweats every few nights. He then started complaining about feeling tired and weak all the time and began taking naps a lot and still sleeping all night. I began noticing he was looking a little pale as well. Finally one evening he came to kiss me goodnight and I could tell he was hot. He took his temperature and it was over 102. He said he didn't feel sick but just tired. Enough was enough. He called his family doctor the next day and was seen late that afternoon. They ordered some blood work which he did that same evening. Early the next morning the doctor called Pat to tell him that his blood counts were all out of whack and he was being sent to a hematologist. Pat called me to fill me in just as I was walking into work. I tried to sound normal and play it off as no big deal while on the phone with him, but as soon as we hung up, the tears started flowing and the panic was overwhelming. Hematologist means oncologist which means cancer. My initial thoughts were of leukemia, and I had 8 more days before we met with the oncologist to wrestle with that.

I couldn't decide how to handle talking with Pat about it. He seemed so calm and nonchalant on the phone so I was almost convinced that he had no idea we were being seen by a cancer doctor. I decided to leave it as such until I could feel him out a little more. No sense in both of us being nervous basket-cases. Someone had to stay normal for Jenna's sake. I spent the next few days on PubMed and with my nose buried in every single text book I could find, which is truly a horrible idea. I would occasionally ask him questions but was pretty much dancing around the subject.

Finally, it had eaten away at me enough that I asked him if he knew what a hematologist dealt with. He causally responded "yeah, cancer," and then went about his business. Ummm...hello?? Where is your freak-out then?? It was the first of many times throughout this process that I was left speechless by my husband's complete and total faith. He told me God was in control and he wasn't worried a bit. God already knew the outcome and it would be according to His will and in Pat's mind that's all that mattered. It was then that I decided I better start spending a lot more time with the Lord so that he might hear my prayers. My husband was leading me spiritually and I had never been so grateful.