February 1, 2024. Jason has cancer.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I woke up with a pit in my stomach. Something felt off and I was uneasy. It was a Thursday. I was supposed to head up to Winter Park to meet some coworkers and consultants for a two day ski trip. Jason had left early for work. He had a GI appointment that day. He’d been feeling really sick for the last week or so. Had massive stomach pain, he wasn’t able to keep food down and was having inconsistent bowl movements. He’d been to urgent care, who did nothing useful. He saw a PCP the day prior who referred him to GI and recommended a CT scan. I was asking myself if I should be going on this ski trip. Jason told me it was fine and so even against my best judgement, I kept planning on going. I drove myself to the mountains and he texted me that the GI ordered a same day CT. He was frustrated, missing work, insurance wasn’t going to approve the scan same day, and he was being asked to pay $500 out of pocket. He was annoyed and angry. But he knew the scan was important.

A few hours went by. I was sitting alone at the base, I had just ordered a beer. My phone sitting on the table on silent. I looked down and he was leaving a voicemail. I quickly answered the phone. He was in tears. Frantic. Telling me there was a mass in his stomach. Or at least that’s the words I heard. The GI doctor told him he needs to go to the ER. He was scared. He said those words over and over. “I’m coming” I said. Jason being Jason, told me I didn’t need to. I said “you’re crazy, I’m coming and I will be there as soon as I can, tell me which hospital they tell you to go to. I need to get to my car. But I’m coming.” I frantically called my mom to let her know what was going on. I was running all over the base of Mary Jane trying to find the best way to get to my car. The people I was with saw me and waved me down. I was absolutely frantic. My body was shaking. I said “I need to get to my car Jason is going to the emergency room.” Brent took me to my car. I drove as quickly and safely as I could from winter park to wheat ridge. White knuckled the entire way. Begging God the entire way to not let this be what I think it was. I arrived at the emergency room just in time for the doctor to be saying the words, “you have cancer” to Jason.

I remember sitting down next to him in total shock from her words. He seemed so calm. She explained that he likely had stage 3 colon cancer. They could see from the CT that it was in his lymph nodes. The mass in his colon was causing a bowel obstruction, which was why he was in so much pain. He needed to go into surgery immediately the next morning. The first step was immediate surgery, everything else, would follow. I remember him saying to her, my uncle has Colon Cancer and Lynch Syndrome. That is the first time I’d ever heard that, any of those words. I’d learn later that Jason’s dad, only the days before, had given him a text of some family history, after Jason started searching for answers. She left the room and I remember collapsing into Jason’s arms. Sobbing. Him holding me tight. He was calm. He held me tight and he said we are going to be ok.

He told me to go home. It was going to be awhile before they could get him a room. It was already creeping into the evening hours. “Go to your parents and be with Nora” he said. It was one of those things that felt really odd, I didn’t want to leave him. But he also liked to process things alone and in his own time, and if I learned anything through this entire journey it is that you always have to respect the way others process things (of course unless its totally abusive and whack…).

I left the hospital, feeling like I was going to vomit. I got on the phone with my mom and she looped my sister in. I remember a certain sense of relief from my sister after learning it was colon cancer, because my earlier words had suggested it was stomach cancer. My mind was spinning. The logistics, trying to remember what the doctor said and relay it correctly. On the other end of it, I had Paul and Susan (Jason’s parents) bombarding my phone, “You need to call us now. We need to know what is going on.” I was going to lose it. I had just learned the love of my life had cancer and I was doing everything to keep myself from collapsing to the ground. Jason’s relationship with his parents, was complicated, to put it kindly. They were added stress in already stressful situations. Jason was very good at cluing them in, only when he felt it was important. But he rarely provided detailed information to them, because most always their response was unhelpful and unkind. My mom, who was my constant life saver in all this, took on the responsibility of keeping them in the loop, so that I could focus on Jason and myself. Over and over the question that evening became, “Do we need to come.” That question becomes a theme, through all this, because it was asked, but rarely executed.

I went to my parents. I remember playing two songs on the drive. Thank God, by Kane Brown and Butterflies by MAX. These were our songs. I was shook. I recall only one other time in my life up to that point that I had felt that way. It was the evening coming home after being in a head on collision with a motorcyclist on a mountain road. I was Unable to eat. Think clearly. I remember walking in through the front door of my parents house, they were waiting for me, so were Nora and Charlie. My dad hugged me and I lost it. The tears flowing from my eyes, down my cheeks, and I remember his words and he held me tight, “We are going to get through this, together.”

I was able to talk with Jason that evening. He texted me “I can’t believe this is happening”. I couldn’t believe it either. Our entire world turned upside down that day. Over the course of time, my fear in the cancer journey changed as we learned more, when things improved, when the prognosis looked good. There was hope, so much hope.

But the pit in my stomach that I felt that day was because I was immediately thinking the worst. Cancer. Cancer kills people. No one was saying Jason was going to die, there were no odds presented on the table, that first day. Many weeks later, from his first oncologist, we would be told that the goal was to cure him.

But the gut wrenching fear I felt inside me that first day, February 1st, after hearing the words “you have cancer” was very real.

That day, was the beginning of the end, before we even knew it to be true.
It would be the start of the greatest heartbreak of my entire life.
Jason’s too.
Along with many others.
We didn’t know it at the time we were receiving a terminal diagnosis that day, neither did the doctors.

I’d been keeping a note in my phone called thoughts and vows, as I was writings thoughts and feelings to prep my vows for our upcoming wedding.

I didn’t sleep a wink the night of February 1st, as I anxiously awaited to go back to the hospital for Jasons surgery first thing in the morning.

A deep pit in my stomach. My mind was racing. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I needed to throw up.

“2/1/24 - Jason has cancer. Life feels so wildly unfair and really scary right now. I need you in this world with me. We got this fight. We have to.”