Story Marc: Angry, sad and powerless. That is how I felt when the doctor told us Esther had breast cancer. Sad about what happened to Esther. Angry, because it had taken Esther’s doctor forever to come up with the diagnoses, even while Esther had told him several times about the signs. Initially, they told us that the tumour would probably be benign, because of the regular shape and the fact that Esther was rather young, etc, etc. However, after the surgery to remove the lump, it seemed to be malignant. In fact, because of the aggressiveness of the cancer her breast needed to be amputated fully and Esther would get chemotherapy. Esther told me later that it had felt like a death sentence. You feel so powerless and to a certain extent incapable as there seems nothing you can do to really help. So I did the only thing that I could. Just be there for her, comfort her and tell her that she would not have to fight this thing alone, but that I would be there for her. From that moment on, one thing had absolute priority and that was to support Esther whenever possible. After the first operation (the amputation), I was quite astonished to see how calm Esther reacted. Only after a couple of days she already told me she had seen the wound and that the surgeon had done a good job. And she was right. After the surgery, chemotherapy started. It was a horrible time for her. She lost her hair, got very sick at times and al kinds of nasty infections popped up. In that period, we mainly focussed on 1 thing: food! Didn’t matter what kind of food, a “kroket(snack)”, fruit, yoghurt, it didn’t matter as long as she ate something. So, there I was doing the grocery shopping, one day yoghurt which would taste horrible the next day. The other day bananas, which two days later all of a sudden tasted horrendous too (according to Esther’s taste buds that seemed to change every day during chemo..). Furthermore, we used a lot of vitamin supplements and so on. Everything necessary we did in order to help her through the chemotherapy. After the chemotherapy, when she had recovered and her hair had grown back, we needed to find a way to move on with our lives. After such an intense period where the only thing you focus on is surviving cancer, we needed to adjust to “normal” life again. And we managed. At the time I fell in love with Esther, I fell in love with the total picture. The fact that she lost one of her breast hasn’t changed that at all. I keep on hearing stories about men that consider their wives / girlfriends no longer to be female / feminine because they lost a breast. I guess everybody reacts differently. Of course Esther has changed, but since I was there during the whole process, I changed too and our bond deepened and developed. Esther suffers from the notorious “chemo-fatigue” and she needs to sleep at least a couple of hours every afternoon. Something, I need to remind myself of every now and then (but I've learned). Esther darling, I’m very proud of you. Not only because of the way you fought the disease, but also because of your efforts to share your experience with others in order to help and comfort them. You truly developed into a beautiful person.
- Start
- My story
- Story Marc
- Links
- Guestbook