Treatment & A Look Into the Past

Patty is getting her treatment as I type. It got started at about 12:30 after visiting with the physician. After speaking with him, it looks as if she'll have one more treatment after this one. He left it up to us because he said the data doesn't say one way or the other but since Patty had the different drugs out of sequence he would do another if we wanted. I asked him what would he do if it was his wife and he said he would probably do the extra treatment since Patty hasn't had any neuropathy side effects. So, that was the clincher. Not great news for the short term, i.e. another Neulasta shot experience but, hopefully better news for the long term, i.e. disease free survival.

While we were waiting for the nurses to hook Patty up I was looking out the window and noticed a person that looked familiar. Upon closer look, I realized it was someone that Patty and I used to know really, really well. We ran around a bunch and had a lot of fun together in the past. Once Patty and I got married and moved to Powell we faded apart as friends due to home distances and then when we had children, and this person was married and had none, we almost never saw them again. We would run into them "once in a blue moon" but that was it. Last year we had heard that this person had asked for a divorce because they had met someone else. It seems we've heard that scenario a lot this year.

The person we saw out the window couldn't see us sitting inside while she talked to a delivery man. As we watched them, I begin to marvel at how far our paths had diverged throughout the years. Here Patty sat, dedicated mom and wife, preparing to be hooked up for a chemotherapy treatment at way to young an age. Outside, sat someone one we knew that had given up a good marriage to experience personal freedom again and supposedly all the great things that come with it. You're probably thinking I'm going to begin expounding on the "life isn't fair" mantra, but I'm not. I never have and I never hope to. I've witnessed it everyday since I've been in the field I work. I knew bad things happen to good people. I just never got my own full taste of it until August 9. Boy, did I get a mouthful.

Anyway, seeing this person stand outside and chit chat and thinking about their circumstances I described above. It brought me back to a question I asked Patty a few weeks ago when we had heard about another friend experiencing unfaithfulness and a seemingly inevitable divorce. I asked her would you rather go through what your going through or be faced with a pending divorce. We both admitted it was a tough question to answer. In the end, we both fell on the side of what we're facing now. At least we have hope that what we have will last.