Running on Empty Read Free Page B

could say it out loud: We might never have another child, and Elaine might grow up without a mother. Jean might die. What we’d heard in that sterile room overwhelmed my wife; although she’d known, on some level, that her cancer could be deadly, she hadn’t really accepted that fact until she realized that her future as a mother was threatened. The realization knocked Jean off-kilter for a few days, but she eventually regained her footing, deciding that what she needed to do was take this one step at a time, try to get well, and then we’d figure out what to do next. Everything had become incomprehensibly complex.
    After Jean healed from the surgery, our lives changed, but not as drastically as you might expect. We kept up our normal routine as much as possible: Jean went to her office and continued to practice law five days a week. I took Elaine with me to Fort Morgan early every morning, left her with a friend, and then put in a long day at the rendering plant. Sometime around six or seven o’clock, I’d pick up Elaine and head back to our house; occasionally, I’d stay later than that and Jean would get Elaine, or I’d go back to the plant in the middle of the night, depending on my workload. Jean never brought work home, so she could focus her attention on the family, and was always eager to have our daughter back in her arms. We dealt with this crisis by compartmentalizing: There was home, work, and the medical merry-go-round—which we desperately hoped would solve this problem for us. We tried to keep it all as separate as possible, acting as if everything would be okay if we kept moving forward, just as Jean had resolved, taking one step at a time.
    She was a trouper, although it’s true what they say about cancer: Sometimes the treatment is as awful as any illness might be. Jean lost both of her breasts and some tissue under her arms to the radical mastectomy, and then her hair fell out from the chemotherapy. She was often weak, nauseated, and off balance, and she had no appetite, so she dropped weight, yet she was puffy from taking prednisone. She worried about what I thought of her appearance. Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less about that and was simply grateful to have her home with us, no matter how much this cruel disease might change her. It did make me sad and angry that cancer could attack my wife so viciously, so senselessly, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
    Jean was mad, too. “Why me? I don’t smoke or drink. What have I ever done to bring this on myself?”
    Staring blankly, I was completely incapable of answering her, but I could empathize. “I understand. I’d be furious if it was me.”
    And what if it was me . . . next? I couldn’t help wondering. Her illness made me acknowledge my own mortality, along with my powerlessness and the vulnerability of everyone around me. If this could happen to Jean, such a good person, so smart and loving and health conscious, who was safe? What about Elaine? Could I really protect anyone I loved?
    Once, when Jean went to the hospital for a spinal biopsy, a long procedure that involved an intimidating surgical drilling device and a lot of waiting, a nurse took my blood pressure to kill some time. She deftly avoided telling me my results but talked with Jean about it later. The numbers were through the roof, something like 160/110. My wife urged me to see our family physician.
    The doc confirmed my hypertension and had one piece of advice: cardiovascular exercise. The problem was stress-induced, as my blood pressure had been rock solid until then. I was extremely fit from my work at the rendering plant and from my fairly recent foray into salt-curing hides, demanding physical work that had given us the money we needed to put Jean through law school. At five feet, nine inches and 148 pounds, I was lean and muscular, but the pressures of my personal life were squeezing my heart.
    My