First of all, I personally want to thank all the people have that been so sweet and supportive after hearing about my Grandma’s passing. I read all your messages, emails, Facebook and Twitters. It amazes me how people that I may have never met in real life can be so incredibly caring. You guys are so wonderful and thank you so much.

I am the bitch that broke up with the guy that had cancer…

“I need to tell you something” he said. “Remember when I went to the doctor and they told me it was more than likely nothing to worry about? Well, they were wrong. I have cancer.”
The words hit me worse than a punch in the gut. This wasn’t happening. Why?
We had just broken up, again, about 2 weeks ago. I was going through a whole new chapter of my life and I was prepared to move on without him. I had just moved out of my parent’s house into my own place and my first quarter at AI was starting. This was too much too soon. I just started crying.

“What”, was the only thing I could manage to get out. When it came to health, he was the unluckiest person you’d ever meet. He was in and out of the hospital more than people 3x his age. Statistically, it seemed almost impossible that he could have another life threatening disease, but that was his luck.
He asked if he could come over to talk. I had just left work and was on my way home. With tears streaming down my face, I told him to meet me at my house. The house we were supposed to live in together, before we broke up.

He told me he had testicular cancer. For the next several months, he’d have to go through surgery and chemo treatments. I had been through cancer before, but chemo treatments were something that I didn’t have much experience with. The only cancer I’d had any experience with was with my Grandma and a few of my parent’s aunts and uncles. Older people had cancer. Young people didn’t get it.

He told me he wanted to get back together. That he missed me and needed me to get through this. And I said yes, even though I was reluctant. Our relationship was a roller coaster ride. I had finally accepted that the life I thought we were going to have together wasn’t going to happen, but then I saw his face.

The look on his face was something that I will never forget. He was scared as hell. He had no idea what he was going to do. He didn’t know if he was going to get through this. And there was no way I could say no.
The next few months were the worst months of my life. I watched helpless as he threw up from his chemo treatments. He tried to be normal, 20 something year old kid, but most of the time he just slept.

Due to him having no immune system, he couldn’t be around his friends a lot. A lot of the times, I even kept my distance for fear I might get him even sicker. For all he was going through, his attitude was always positive. He started losing his arm hair first. The day he realized, he jokingly started pulling it out saying “watch, it doesn’t even hurt!” When he lost the hair on his head, he nicknamed himself “cabbage patch”.

Friends and family stuck together to help him through it. His buddies all shaved their heads when he started to lose his hair so he wasn’t the only bald one. My sister and I made him food that he could manage to hold down. His family was amazing, taking him from doctor to doctor and still managing to work their jobs. He had people and we were determined to get him through it.

Surviving a life threatening illness changes people. He survived physically, but the person that he once was had completely died. He wouldn’t listen to the music we used to see live in concert. He stopped drinking and looked down on me when I wanted to have a beer. He suddenly decided that he wanted to stop going to school for computers and become a youth pastor. Instead of going to movies, we were going to bible studies. He wanted me to open my eyes to something that all my life I wasn’t sure about. As much as I tried to be supportive, I could see how far we were drifting apart. The person that I was once so in love with wasn’t the same person anymore. I wanted HIM, not this new person.

We stretched it out, painfully, for as long as we could, but there was no way I was getting that old person back. We spent more time fighting with each other than doing anything else. We went around in circles trying to get each other to see things from the person’s point of view. I was so angry, but not at him, at the cancer. I blamed the cancer for everything. The cancer took him from me. If it weren’t for the cancer, we wouldn’t be going through this.

I finally realized it wasn’t the cancer at all; it was us. I couldn’t blame the disease anymore. It wasn’t cancer’s fault. If anything, cancer opened my eyes to the fact that we just didn’t work. Although he got through it stronger than ever before, cancer killed our relationship for good.

Filed under: friends, life, me by Barbara
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