Being the caretaker for your spouse is something you sign up for when you make your wedding vows. The vow to be together and support each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. These things were really brought to life last year. I think the most difficult part for a caretaker in this situation is that there seems to be very little you can do to help. It is one thing when you know they will recover. It is a whole other thing when you know there is a chance that they might not.
I know when Blaine got his hip redone we all rallied around and we supported him as a family. It was a bit of a worry for sure. It really was bothering him and he would tell anyone who would listen, “I need a new hip.” It was his first topic of conversation with almost everyone he met. You just never know how things will turn out. Sure we teased him a lot. You know Blaine would be doing the same if we were in that kind of situation.You hope that when it is all said and done that you have a successful procedure and that at the end of the pain and suffering you will feel better than you did before. I remember us as a family walking to the hospital from the hotel and Blaine saying, “There is something that feels wrong about being able to walk to the hospital and knowing that when you get out you won’t be able to walk.” We all knew though that it was about quality of life and that the surgery would free him from pain and help his mobility. And it did! It was very successful.
The kind of support we had to provide for his cancer diagnosis was very different. The risk was much greater. Maybe the worst thing was that he really wasn’t that sick or in any real big amount of pain going into this one. He had a bit of a sore side. Really until he started the chemotherapy he felt not bad. So that is a tougher one to swallow. I cannot imagine all that he went through mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I knew him intimately and yet I know I could have never completely understood.
As a caregiver, I felt like no matter how hard I searched it was hard to find any clear answers. I was searching for a lot of things. I was searching for a cure. I was searching for others with similar diagnosis who had been successful. I was looking for the correct food to eat, supplements to take, ways to manage the stress and emotion. What I found was a lot of suggestions, a lot of people with claims. There are whole programs that teach you how to cure any type of cancer. There are Facebook groups that have many people offering advice. The problem with it all is it is overwhelming. I went to my naturopath and she made what I thought were excellent suggestions only to find the pharmacy telling us that those things were not to be used with chemotherapy for this reason or that. Who do you listen to?
The Canadian Cancer Society does a good job of giving out practical advice. They provide a lot of reading material. They assign you a counselor that you can speak to, a dietician and nurses are available by phone for answering questions. We found the cancer lodge really nice as well. We did speak to the counselor a couple of times. Really I just didn’t see what she would be able to say to me or Blaine that would help. After all, she had no definitive answers either. We had a dietician assigned to us and in the end a whole palliative care team but we never had a meeting with them as he passed the day the meeting was to take place.
In the end what did help was the support from our family and friends. These were the people we could count on. The energy healers were a huge support to help with pain management and emotional stability. There were some really kind practitioners and nurses that helped. I worked hard every day to read and learn everything I could and implement it. Some of it was helpful but in the end, all of our efforts could not save him from this aggressive cancer. It was so frustrating to put all you have into something and despite the effort, watch it fail. Even though we were doing our very best, it just was not good enough. Fortunately, we can look back and say we did do our best and there was nothing else that we could do but our best. My best had to be good enough because it was all I had. For better or for worse, as a family we were there. In the end nothing else mattered. Blaine, without a doubt would have done the same for me. He would have done it for any of us.
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