"In Sickness and In Health"

You know, being married to the same person for a long time can put you in a very comfortable, take them for granted place. Well, Dave has traveled some over the many years we've been married (21+), but I had never been so excited for him to get home as I was this time. We've got a solid marriage, not perfect, but we love each other very much and have learned over the years not to take each other for granted. We're a team and we work well as a team. Back when we were dating, we'd always talk about just spending our lives together, raising a family, retiring, growing old together, getting that cabin in the mountains, sitting on the porch, enjoying the view.

Well, when I was 9 weeks pregnant with our 2nd son, Kyle, Dave had a benign brain tumor. I think this was one of those times in our marriage where we realized that our plans may not work out the way we thought they would. Fortunately, Dave had a fine surgeon that removed the tumor, there was some damage to his pituitary gland, but all in all, we were fortunate. Over the years, Dave has remained on some medications as a result of his pituitary gland being damaged, but he's been relatively healthy.

Fast forward seven and a half years and Dave gets the diagnosis of Myxoid Liposarcoma (Stage 3 - Malignant). This is a whole new beast and he's going in for the fight of his life. Sarcomas are rare, aggressive tumors that like to spread. His was a huge soft tissue mass on his left thigh, fortunately for us it hadn't spread, but he was going to be put through some of the roughest chemo possible to shrink the tumor and kill the cells before the doctor would remove the mass. So, like I said, we're about to get to the end of his journey, his surgery is about 3 weeks away, and then I go in for my mammogram.

I've had small health issues during the course of our marriage, but nothing major. Well, now, finding out I have breast cancer, I suddenly have something significant and I just see this in Dave's eyes when he got home from his trip that he realized, he wasn't the only one in the fight for their life now. A friend of his had lost his wife to breast cancer...I think it became very real to him when he came home from his trip and we were together how much we appreciated one another.

Dave's been an amazing rock for me and he has such a great attitude, I know that my prognosis, no matter what it is, I'll get through it, with him by my side (even if he's on crutches).