Double Whammy
Originally written on September 19th:
I had a beautiful, real, and eye opening conversation with a friend yesterday. Reminding me of the path I walked. There are two parts to this story. Two pains to process. There is the grief, pain and sorrow of missing Jason every single day, knowing my life now goes on without him. That is the most devastating. But there is also the trauma of the suffering that were the last months of Jason’s life. And truthfully the suffering of his entire cancer journey. It’s fair to say some days in that journey looked far better than others, but those 18 months from Jason’s diagnosis were hard, trying, draining. For the both of us in such different ways. The end, of course, was the hardest part. But I realize now as I go back through videos of a time before all of that, how much it really did take from us, even when the journey felt manageable.
I think over time it may come to me more, and eventually the good moments will outshine the bad. I can barely recall certain moments of pain from the past because the recent pain and suffering is so fresh and feels so much worse. Because it is, on both accounts. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t outweigh moments of pain, fear, tragedy that happened in the other months, because at the time those felt like the worst moments in the world.
I’ll start with the freshest most recent recollections of it all. The bitter painful end. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but I can tell you it wasn’t this. I never could have imagined something so painful, aggressive, cruel. I tried to never think about Jason dying, even though I knew it was a possible outcome of his situation. But in my mind, it wasn’t something that was coming soon. Definitely not this soon. Some may say that was denial. But it wasn’t that. It was hope that the trial would work, because no one had ever told us otherwise. I thought if it didn’t, we’d get another year or so, opportunity at many other trials, because that’s what the doctors said. They’d say the good thing about your cancer DNA is it has many things that can be targeted through trial. So one would only assume that if this one failed, we’d jump to what’s next, just like we did when the immunotherapy stopped working. It’s hard to fully comprehend it all and the way it happened. Not because my mind refuses to remember, but more so because it truthfully happened so rapidly that my body was in survival mode the last 6 weeks of Jason’s life. Not even realizing until about 1 week before his passing that death was coming.
It’s devastating to watch the person you love lose themself. I can’t even say slowly, because nothing about it was slow. It was rapid and the daily change in Jason was shocking. The Jason that left the hospital on July 31st with me was Jason. And at the time, he didn’t look great, but compared to where he went in two weeks, that photo I have from the 31st he looks like an entirely different person. I remember we were on Main Street, making the turn onto Daphne, so close to home. And he says in an announcer type voice “On a Thursday, at 6pm, Jason Scheuer is coming home!” My eyes filled with tears. Relief that I was bringing my love home. Fear for what was next, but the tiny ounce of hope for him to get stronger to receive the next dose of chemo to have some chance at getting him healthy enough to get to the next trial. Not once did it cross my mind I was bringing him home to die.
