This time absence does not make the heart grow fonder.

My wife and i always used to say that absence makes the heart grow fonder and that is true.  We spent 10 years courting each other in a long distance relationship where we spend most of the time, including our last two years before our wedding, in separate cities.

That was 14 years ago and spending time away from each other since then has never been easy.  I’m not sure how hard it is for my wife for me to be away, but it is killing me to be away.  I find it hard to concentrate when I feel like I should be there with her.  I know that there is nothing I can physically do to help but it still hurts that my soulmate is alone at a very difficult time in our lives.  i just don’t want her to be hurt anymore.  I don’t want her to run into any more barriers without me.

I don’t know how spouses or partners deal with this.  I guess that is really why I write this blog.  It is for us but more for me to talk about it when there is nobody else.  It is a way to express my sorrow for my wife without letting her know how I am hurting  and knowing that at I am still a rock for her.

What is it about breast cancer that makes this so different from other cancers?  Is it the fact that it is located in a very external part of your body?  The fact that it affects so many women?  The fact that it has no age discrimination?   Whatever it is, I think it seems like more of a personal cancer to almost everyone as we almost all know someone who has had to fight breast cancer.

In case I haven’t said it before.  Here are the facts I know:

The cancer is 12mm in my wife’s right breast at about 8 o’clock..  The physician says a lumpectomy is a possibility but we are leaning toward a bilateral mastectomy with a skin sparing reconstruction.  My wife seems to be in good spirits knowing that doctors currently believe it is stage 1 although there is some swelling in nodes under both armpits.  All other signs seem positive as she is okay for hormone therapy, etc.