The one way trip

Life is a one way journey without any stops or breaks. If things break while on this trip, it would have to be fixed while moving. Most of us have not encountered big health issues in life, or we were so young that we don’t remember. For me my biggest memories of big events were my grandmother dying, my mum having a fall hurting her heel, and being away for a while and my son being born a bit early and spending his first 3 weeks in hospital. 

It’s not before now, in the middle of my journey that this picture perfect illusion of life is starting to crack. And the cracks get bigger and bigger. I have so far lost my grandparents, which all were at their end station. I lost little Even, who was born at the same time as Markus, and spent time side by side in the hospital, his journey never started. I have lost 3 people from my social group Kathrine, Ingo and Barbro. Their trip got derailed by cancer, way too early, and all three left 2 and 3 kids with one parent. This was heart wrenching, and impacted me greatly.

I had a scare with my own journey too, which has altered my perspective and expectation of life.

Germaine (49), my wife, was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer 3 weeks ago. Ttriple-negative. It has put our life into a new focus overnight. It impacts not just Germaine, but everyone around her, and especially Luca, her son, her parents, my kids and me. Seeing her coming to terms with chemo treatment, possible removal of breast, radiotherapy, more chemo and in worst case cancer spreading is difficult.

I consider us lucky in all of this. We are in a position where it is discovered early, and no signs of spreading. She is receiving world class treatment and is being cared for well. So far she has had a PET scan, which confirmed no detected spreading. The chemo and immunotherapy started 2 weeks after diagnosis. Germaine has had a port operated in to make the delivery of chemo and immunotherapy easier, but this implant has been painful for her. And mixed with the emotions around cancer and the pain we have had lots of emotions coming up.

On the more organising side of things, she had to cancel her trip back home with her son, to see her parents. Luckily Luca is old enough to travel alone, so currently this is the plan. We have also cut Germaine's hair, pixie style, to make the transition to hair loss less noticeable. This too is emotional, as this is a reminder of what to come. We will do a buzz cut, but after Luca has gone to Europe.

It’s still early days, and the next chemotherapy will be given tomorrow morning. This mid trip emergency repair will be challenging, and we will just have to do our best. I will do my best to support her and our little family, and remind myself that we only have one go at this. One trip, from start to end.