Waiting Is Not Easy

Rest. Heal.

I feel like I hardly know the meaning of those words right now. Since January 8th, the day of his MRI, and in a much larger way, since July 31st, some six odd and atypical years ago, there isn’t a great deal of rest, and when there is, it’s barely to be trusted. Usually, it’s just a quiet moment before the other shoe drops. It’s the calm before the storm, really. And we’re always tensing for the next storm.

But after a cancer pathology discussion with Chase’s doctors today, I realized we will be entering a season of enforced rest. Despite needing frequent bloodwork to monitor his calcium and thyroid levels and all the little things that are holding him together right now, the number one priority is simply to let his body heal.

Because while the pathology was most definitely cancer, the tumor was just under 2cm total, which means that – possibly for the first time in his entire life – Chase is considered “low risk“. I can hardly say it with a straight face because that sounds so very un-Chase. And because he is low risk, he gets time to heal.

Later on, after Easter and Spring, towards the beginning of May when Chicago winters finally end, the area under his angry, red scar will finally be healed and then they can do another ultrasound and look at all the lymph nodes. They took two during the surgery and they were both cancerous, but this is such a slow growing cancer that rest comes first. Right now, everything is still too angry swollen to see the truth of his status anyway. And unlike most other cancer where lymph nodes change the game completely and terribly, this thyroid cancer outcome is almost guaranteed the same story whether it has spread or not. We have not wrapped our heads around that yet.

So, in the Spring, we will know more than we do right now. First an ultrasound, and then more tests or scans or therapy or even a surgery. Everything depends the lymph nodes…and the lungs…and maybe even the bones too. There are so many possibilities and variables and it all depends on what they see in the Spring.

Everything in us fights against this wait because the cancer we’ve grown used to – the cancer that inaugurated and baptized us – that cancer was a super fast thief in the night that we couldn’t let borrow even a single minute in Chase’s body. We sat with that cancer in unknown proliferation for the first five months – the same total as we will sit with this one too, and yet we fought for every single second of that time with Chase. It was brutal. So this idea of sitting with the potential of more unchecked disease still inside eats at us like… cancer. Ha. And yet, this is what’s best for Chase in the now, and we’ve sworn on our lives to do what’s best for Chase – always.

So, for better or worse, we have been given an amazing amount of time to just be. Oh, there will still be hospital days every few weeks for other appointments, but we will sit on and with this strange, slow thyroid cancer.

And it’s good because we are so used to the fight being all action, all the time. The fight is fire and power and immediate and urgent until we have nothing left to give. But as of this afternoon, we are doctor-ordered and prescribed to fight still and quiet. This fight is taking a deep breath and waiting for it with great patience.

Isn’t it strange how life sometimes strengthens us in stillness over noise? …how silence can be more powerful than all the answers? …how powerless is powerful, if you’re in the right place?

Waiting is not easy, but for now, we choose to view it as a gift. We will live with this cancer. Chase will heal and we will breath deep, and then we will choose hope again.

Moment by moment.

Farther along we’ll know all about it, farther along we’ll understand why.
So cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine.
We’ll understand this, all by and by. … There’s so much more to life than we’ve been told. It’s full of beauty that will unfold. And shine… Farther along. – Josh Garrels