I promise this story will not be a never ending saga of sadness. There will be happy moments and heartwarming bits; but it's befitting to know that just as they occurred in real life, they are sporadic and unpredictable. There will be funny anecdotes, some on the darker side, some on the lighter side. These too will come when you least expect it. But the start of the story is most certainly bittersweet. And that's where I will begin.
But, alas, if I'm perfectly honest, I can't pinpoint the exact moment this story begins, which is one reason (of many) that I have struggled to sit down in front of my computer. How do you bring something to life if you don't know where to start? Do I start with when I was told by a radiologist that I'd never be able to conceive naturally? Or what about when my period was a week late and I peed on a stick just to check and then a second one to double check and we miraculously found out that we did indeed conceive naturally? Maybe I should start when Brendan and I parked at our favorite (well second favorite) beach in the world (a high accolade to Navarre Beach) and I tossed my flip flops in the car, embraced my good friend, Anna, who was about to take our pregnancy photos and stepped on a twisted, rusty nail hidden beneath the warm sand.
Perhaps the best place to start is with a post-it note. A canary yellow 3x3 3M post-it note. Or was it purple? I'd be lying if I said I remembered. It's really funny the things we can convince our memory of. I am positive that it was a yellow post-it, but then I second guess myself. It could have been purple. I'm pretty sure it was. But, as you may suspect, the color was not important. What was important was the chicken scratch scribbled on it. "0000 Midnight." It was August 29, 2019 and Brendan had to drag me out of the Gulf of Mexico so we could go to what would be my last ob/gyn appointment. I say drag, because the warm, emerald water of the Gulf of Mexico is my happy place. Baby on the way or not, I could have spent the entire afternoon floating, eyes closed, the warm sun penetrating my salty, tanned skin. So yes, Bren did indeed drag me (as he often did) out of the water and to the car. The problem, aside from deserting paradise, was that my ob/gyn didn't realize that this was my last appointment before being induced. She completely forgot that I was to be induced that evening. In all fairness, she's a very busy doctor, but in all fairness, I was a very pregnant woman carrying an almost ten pound baby. As the appointment wrapped up, I reminded her of the plan that Dr. Ruis (my outstanding doctor with Maternal Fetal Medicine) and I discussed and she hastily grabbed a post-it note and scribbled "0000 Midnight." That was the time Bren and I were to report back to the hospital. Seeing as how we weren't on the original induction schedule, we stopped at the nurses station as we exited the office to find out the likelihood that we'd be able to actually have our baby in the next 24 hours. It would be tight, especially since a holiday weekend was approaching. We were advised to call before making the drive back to the hospital that night. After the appointment, we grabbed food at Jason's deli and called my MFM doctor. Maybe we should just wait, after all I was only 39 weeks pregnant. I wasn't dilated and the baby was as snug as could be as high up as he could be. Dr. Ruis, who accepted our calls 24/7 throughout my pregnancy, advised that we go in that evening. This baby was only going to get bigger the longer we waited; quite simply, it was eviction time. What happened next was a blend of irony and serendipity. Irony because I agonized over choosing the right color for my manicure and pedicure at the nail salon. It mattered so much to me what my nails looked like as I held our precious little one for the first time and what my toes looked like as I pushed him out. After 15, maybe 20 minutes, I chose an earth toned, neutral based shade of purple. When I look back at the stress I felt while making this decision and being completely blind to the stress I would feel in less than 12 hours, the irony doesn't escape me. (Spoiler alert: I still fuss over decisions like this. Cancer changes a lot of things, but I'd be willing to bet that I'll go to my deathbed worrying about silly decisions like this). Now, for the serendipitous part. As low key cinephiles, Bren and I wanted to go to the movie theatre one last time before baby was born. We figured after my mani/pedi, we'd go to the movies. "The Art of Racing in the Rain" was next up in my queue of books to be read. An avid "must read the book before watching the movie" snob, I was willing to make an exception as we didn't know when we'd be able to go to the movies again. We were all set to go to the local AMC when we decided it might be nicer to go home and spend time with Zero, our still very much a Golden Retriever puppy who had absolutely zero intuition that I was pregnant and a tiny human would be disrupting his life very soon. Plus, we wanted to enter parenthood calm and relaxed, not rushed and stressed. (ha. ha. I'm allowed to laugh about this). If you haven't read the book or watched the movie, you may not realize the serendipity present in our choice to skip the movie. I'd hate to ruin such a heart wrenching, yet uplifting plot for you, but it's essential to my point here. Not only does Enzo, the dog who narrates the story, die, but so does his master's young wife. Only a few years into their marriage, she is diagnosed with cancer and dies unexpectedly, leaving behind her husband and little girl. As I've said before, I think some things happen just because, but I really think that God, or the universe, or some greater force guided our decision to skip that movie that night.
Less than 12 hours later I was told that I may have cancer.
