Watching the rain, hoping for sun

It is the Night Before Marathon. I’m here in my room watching the clouds and the wind and the rain–and hoping tomorrow will be a better day.

I cannot describe to you what it is like…

I’ll be up before dawn to bandage my feet, get into my armor, and have something to eat. But tonight I sit quiet here at my desk. The silence is painful and my thoughts are too dark.

Jane’s NET cancer Marathon

Two years ago Jane was already in trouble. We’d met Jennifer Chan and Javid Moslehi–and between them they’d told us the best and the worst. Jane’s heart had been damaged–so badly she would need surgery as soon as we could get the cancer load down to a level that would give her a chance. But the surgery would open other options of treatment her heart could not currently handle.

I will have its scalp.

And so the race began between the NET cancer, Jane’s reserves, and her failing heart. It was a brutal race. It cost Jane every ounce of strength, courage, and optimism she had–and cost me every ounce of those things I had as well. Twenty-one months later I am still physically and emotionally damaged.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…

That will not stop me tomorrow. Rather, it will fuel me–as it did a year ago. When the pain arrives–and it will–I will remember Jane in that hospital bed, fighting with everything she had every day for weeks. My pain tomorrow will be as nothing compared to that pain. It will be as nothing compared even to my own pain in the last hours of her life–and in all the hours since her death.

It was a brutal race.

NET cancer made many powerful enemies when it went after her. Her four weeks in the hospital inspired everyone she met. People who had never heard of the disease before became its mortal enemies. And from the moment of her diagnosis, it made an enemy of me.

Eight, ten, twelve, fourteen sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day I grind on NET cancer. I read, I study, I think, I write, I walk, I run–some days I feel like I am even eating this disease. It is the thing that took my beautiful one from me–and forced me to watch while it did it. I will have its scalp.

We shall overcome NET cancer

I cannot describe to you what it is like to watch the person you love reduced day-by-day to nothingness–and be powerless to stop it. I cannot tell you what

it is like to force yourself to be positive and upbeat–to never show a moment’s doubt in the face of the building certainty of death. I cannot tell you what it is like to hold someone’s hand, knowing they will never wake up again, waiting for death–wanting it to come at the end and not wanting it to come to an end.

…tonight I sit quiet here at my desk.

So tomorrow I will walk. I will walk through blisters, cramps, and every kind of muscle and bone-ache there is. I will walk in the hope that we will find an answer to NET cancer–and to all the other cancers–so that no one has to die that particular death again–so that no one will have to watch that particular kind of death again–and feel so helpless and so useless.

Good night–and good luck.