I’m sitting across the dining table from my beautiful wife, radiant as ever. Our friend Dana, the owner of Alter Ego hair salon,  just left our house. Laughter and tears filled the kitchen as Dana unveiled Anne’s beauty in a new light.  Thank you, sweet Dana. 

  
A few hours earlier, Sue Scoggins, a dear friend and uber-talented artist whose work Anne adores, dropped in and surprised my bride with a painting of a neat little coastal town in Italy named Cinque Terre. It’s a place that, Lord willing, I’ll take Anne when we’ve run the thief out of town for good. Thank you, sweet Sue. 

  
At the end of a day when you have to shave off your hair, you can still have a good day…when friends give of themselves so generously. 

 So says Anne. And so says I. 

Love to you all. 

if you ever want to know where to find me when I’m sad or stressed (all four of you), a good place to start is Umstead State Park.  It’s peaceful, free of distractions, and beautiful. 

That’s the spot from which I wrote this. 

Sometime earlier today, Anne sent me a short text with a picture attached. 

It was a big clump of hair. 

It actually wasn’t the first clump I had seen – the hair loss started a day or two ago – but this one was considerably larger, and it triggered a wave of sadness in me that I haven’t been able to shake. 

So I came to Umstead to run it out, pray it out, cry it out. 

I had more written at this point, but I’m going to stop here. More tears. And I know my God cares…

 Psalm 56:8 “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”

I hate cancer. 

GREAT bit of news:

Anne’s genetic testing results came back, and she does not carry the breast cancer gene. 

Which means this little sugar bean is not at a higher risk of developing breast cancer. 

   
 
Mommy and Daddy are both thankful beyond words. 

Through tears, Anne whispered those three words to me tonight. 

She of course referring to chemo, cancer, the whole shebang.  

Today Anne started a 6-day steroid treatment to cure the “Taxol rash” she’s developed  since her first chemo treatment last Tuesday. If you’ve ever been put on a doctor-prescribed steroid regimen – or worse, your kids have – you know it makes you feel wired, antsy, strung-out, and irritable. (Kids often turn into spawns of satan).  And you don’t sleep.  So for Anne, who is already exhausted, she feels like she’s pulled an all-nighter, run a marathon, and imbibed 14 cups of coffee. 

And that’s just the steroids. 

Here’s a glimpse of what the first post-chemo week has looked like for Anne. 

C-Day: Nine hours at the Duke Cancer Center. Long day. Got her PaTCH drugs. Ninjas unleashed. 

Day 1-2: Tired but not feeling all that terrible. 

Day 3-5: Completely run over by a train. So little energy that she had to rest after walking across the room. “Like lead” (see previous post). 

Day 6-7: starting to rebound, but still tired. Tingly fingers. Itchy. Body still feels off, but feeling a bit more herself. 

Knowing she was fatigued, I asked Anne if she had written anything she wanted me to share with you. She mentioned she had written an email to some friends and said “feel free to share. I’m too tired to edit and post.”

Below is what I copied and pasted from her email. I sure admire her courage, her honesty.  What a trooper. Cancer sucks. 

I am feeling more human. Feeling hit by a truck has diminished to more like being run over by a bike. Great blood count report today (my hemoglobin actually improved from before chemo—what???) and overall good check up with doc. She gave me several high fives in celebration that I weathered first round without any major, unusual incidents.  I have a new arsenal of meds (things like Claritin and Zantac) to help with some side effects for next round. They apparently have a pretty good solution for almost every side effect. Just gotta figure out what the need is for each person. I have to go on a hefty round of steroids to combat a rash from the taxol chemical…and the bummer is my sleep will be impacted. Gotta get rash under control before next round. Specifics to pray for there.

I’ve been sad about my hair the last couple of days. Just about a week left until that crazy side effect becomes a reality. No matter which way you slice it, it just stinks. Sarah sweetly stroked my head this morning and assured me she would still love me without my hair AND God would bring it back. Five year olds can say it so perfectly.  

Kids are doing ok! They snuggled a lot with me while I was in bed a good deal the last four days. Our talks have covered everything from Luke’s birthday wish list to how wonderful it will be when all things are made new and no one gets sick anymore. Priceless.  

Day at a time, learning more about the friendship of Jesus as I walk through some shadows and rejoicing they are only shadows…

Now for our Fletcher highlight…

We just had new artificial turf installed in our little urban backyard. Sarah modeled it this afternoon while we laid down on it together. It looks and feels like grass. Okay, maybe even a little better. 

  

Just now I was walking back from the YMCA (we’re spoiled; it’s literally across the street)  scrolling through messages on my iPhone, when I look up and see my bride sitting in our front yard.

“I just needed to be outside for a little bit,” she says with a weak smile.

With her is our one year-old puppy Tovah, our fun, effervescent Goldendoodle.

  
Normally Tovah would be in our fenced backyard, but it looks like a nuclear wasteland right now (a metaphor for how Anne feels at the moment). You may laugh, but we are installing artificial turf in our little urban backyard. The stuff looks real. Even better, I don’t have to mow it, sod it, seed it, think about it. And it’s dog proof.

    

I digress.

Anne chose Tovah’s name, which is Hebrew for “God is good.”  And this morning at 11:00 a.m. on our front lawn, our Goldendoodle embodied her name beautifully.

Watch this short video all the way to the end.

You’ll see.

That was Anne’s response via text, when I asked how she was feeling this morning.

They say Day 3 after chemotherapy is when you start to really feel it.

Boy is THAT right. 

Facing the thief. Bear hunting. And feeling it. 

My mother-in-law Suzanne, herself a breast-cancer survivor, nailed it as we were talking about Anne’s physical state: “the sparkle goes out of the eyes for a while.”  Anne’s so tired that she’s having a hard time even finding the energy to talk. In fact, after attending Jack’s end-of-camp basketball game this afternoon, she came home and crashed for the last four hours.

We’re very thankful that the nausea has been minimal thus far. Praying it stays that way. As many of you can attest, that’s not always the case, as we learned firsthand during our own mothers’ successful battles with cancer.

Anne hasn’t articulated this, but I’m seeing another way in which cancer is a thief: it robs her of time with the kids. Cancer-appropriate comment – that sucks. 

Hopefully the specifics I’ve shared provide good fodder for praying. You know we love hearing how you are praying, so share away.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d sign off with something for which I’m thankful, that’s fun, or which gives you a window into our world. This quick story cracked me up…

Yesterday, Jack lost a tooth during basketball camp (something like his 13th?). Later that evening as we’re headed to bed, his brother Luke asked me if the tooth fairy was real (7 yr-old brain: lose a tooth, get money).

“What do you think, big guy?” I asked.  “Noooooo…but that means you and mom put money under our pillows, right?” To which I responded, “Well I don’t have to tell you that now do I!”

Coming to his brother’s defense, Jack chimes in with “Dad, it’s not like someone comes up from Africa and puts a few dollars under our pillow.”

Ha! Where Africa came from, I have no idea. But touché Jack, touché!

With gratitude and hope,

Van

This morning was the first time I had ever stepped foot in an “infusion suite.”  While a nurse immediately began attending to Anne to ready her for chemo, I found myself standing in the middle of the room trying to absorb the scene. Rows of comfy chairs facing each other, each with an IV station & equipment. Cheerful murals on the ceiling, lots of natural light, and friendly staff. Yet, I couldn’t shake sadness.

The look on my face is best described by sharing what Anne said to a group of nurses empathetically glancing over at me: “This is my husband Van, and it’s his first time here. I think he’s going through a little bit of shock at the moment.”

That was a few hours ago, and I’m still processing. I’ll have to circle back to that experience in a future blog post. To cope in the moment, I defaulted to my sense of humor, suggesting to one of the nurses that the infusion suite change its name “chemo lounge,” or just “the Lounge” for short. Lame, but oh well.

On a better note, Anne’s nurse practitioner Jamie is cool. She and Anne hit it off, and that made me happy. I jotted down the names of the four drugs that Anne is getting today – Perjeta, Taxol, Carboplatin, and Herceptin. I quickly tried to think of an acronym to help me remember the drugs, because, well, that’s how my brain works.

PaTCH was the first one; easy enough, provided I can actually recall the names of the drugs! CHuTzPa was my other, albeit more complicated, choice.  But I like the meaning: “audacity, nerve.” It takes CHuTzPa to face the thief, K.C.A. This made Anne chuckle. Score.

Now I’m back to work while Anne sits for the next 5 or so hours and let’s the ninjas go to town. It’s hard to focus. But just like my wife, I have a mission too: care for my clients, do the next thing, and trust our Father to provide for my family just as He always has.

Anne just sent me a text and a picture from the Lounge. Verbatim…

Bubby, meet the ninjas.

I’m sitting by a window with a bird feeder attached to it and lots of birds visiting. Just a happy reminder that the Lord cares for the sparrows – how much more does he care for his daughter! Kids started this morning super excited to go to camps. That was mercy for this mommy!

I’m thankful for them.

I’m docked in the waiting room of the surgery center where Anne will be having a port installed?/inserted?/rigged?/placed?  Sheesh. I’m still figuring out the terminology required to navigate the straits of cancer for my bride. 

By way of yours truly, several of you who have survived cancer sent Anne sweet notes of cheer in which you mention how great the port is, how it will be her best friend,  how much she will love it, and so forth. 

Okay, do whaaaaat? 

My knee-jerk, gut response to your ‘pep talks’ was:  “What is wrong with you people?!  How in the h-e-double-hockeysticks is that supposed to be comforting?!”  It’s funny how  strangely I process new information in the midst of a 100 things flying at me. 

Needing to stay on task, I stuck (pun intended) this whole “snuggle with your port” business on a shelf until I picked up Anne for her port-placement surgery. 

And she graciously explained…

You get stuck A LOT along the cancer treatment road. IVs, shots, blood drawn, you name it. Therein lies the beauty and mercy of the port. Easy access, convenient, and pain-free. 

Just now I was sharing my blog post with her, and she laughed. And then she welled up with tears, IV already in her, and said “that port is like a little badge of mercy.” 

Hence the title of my post. 

And why I love my wife. 

  

I’m writing from Holden Beach, where I somewhat spontaneously brought the kids (sans Anne) for a long weekend stay with the Kirby family, dear friends of ours who possess three wonderful things:

1. A beach house
2. Sweet kids of almost identical ages to mine
3. The gift of hospitality

We’ve had a big time kayaking, boogie boarding, and playing in the sand.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Anne has enjoyed some quiet downtime, even seizing opportunities to do a few gratifying projects before chemotherapy starts on Tuesday.  Yesterday she popped me a picture of her just-completed organization project for our little playroom with the caption: “AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”

Here’s my non-earth-shattering ephiphane: Cancer – aka the thief – has a way of sapping your joy without you even knowing it. One of the antidotes is doing normal, fun stuff.  Or, to borrow a song title from the late-80s hip-hop group Digital Underground, there are times that you simply gotta “doowutchyalike.”

I know. Profound.

Ninjas, Knife, Napalm. That’s the sequence of Anne’s KCA treatment plan. Especially pray for her this Tuesday. First chemo treatment lasts eight hours. I can’t even sleep for eight hours, so the fact that my wife will have to sit with a poison drip for that long is beyond me.

Some fun pictures…

This morning Anne and I met with her oncologist to map out her treatment plan. Anne later affirmed what I sensed during our visit: it felt good to have some concrete dates in place.

There’s so much I want to say right here, but my jumbled brain is having a hard time processing things. Mainly, how to articulate what it’s like to see your spouse visibly relieved – dare I say, glad? – to know that next week she’ll have chemical grenades thrown into her bloodstream.  Or as Anne so cleverly coined for us – they’re releasing the ninjas.

That’s not to say she did cartwheels in the lounge as we left the Duke Cancer Center…

Okay. Brass tacks:

Chemo first. Starts next Tuesday, June 9th, and is repeated every three weeks over the course of about four months. Many of you know this, but chemotherapy has a cumulative effect. Meaning, Anne will feel more fatigued after each treatment. Hate that.

Surgery second. Still working out the details of what that will look like, but knowing my wife, she’s going to opt for the most fail-proof procedure. You guys probably catch my drift.

Third, radiation. That sumbitch made it to her lymph nodes, and my limited understanding is that after surgically removing the infected one, you need to cover that area with napalm to make sure you eradicate the enemy. If you can’t tell, I’m mad at Anne’s cancer right now.

Anne and I are immensely grateful for your notes, emails, texts, phone calls, meals, offers to help. We feel the outpouring of love. Bless all of you sweet people.

I’ve decided that I’m going to end each post with something that we are thankful for, or that makes us smile/laugh, or that reminds us that we live in God’s world, one that will one day be made new, perfect, right, free of cancer.

So with that in view, a fun story I just had to share:

A few weeks ago, I had the fun of being one of several parent chaperones on my son Jack’s 3rd grade field trip to the NC Zoo. One of Anne’s good friends, Laura Vann, and I were assigned to keep tabs on a grand total of four boys (two of them being our own), and so we trailed them as fast as we could through the various exhibits.

Something completely unplanned and magical happened when our boys arrived at the chimpanzee exhibit. So thankful for the iPhone, and Beastie Boys.  You just gotta watch…

https://youtu.be/nGhFLLjwbRE

Cheers-

Van