Showtunes, TV & Real Life
Growing up my favorite movies were musicals and musical soundtracks were my preferred albums/cassettes. Show tunes have always underscored my daily life, at least in my head. When I was having GI issues, I heard Mrs. Potts singing “I’ll be bubbling, I’ll be brewing” over the rumbles of my stomach. On Sundays when my kids were little and I was trying to get everyone out the door, I heard “Get Me to the Church on Time” over the repeated whining about missing shoes and coats. And, when a coworker and I didn’t see eye-to-eye, it was “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” but with their name inserted instead. The songs were how I processed the phase in my life that I was undergoing.
So, in early November, as I was drying my hair one morning, I wasn’t surprised when the music in my head began, it was a song from the musical Nine called “My Husband Makes Movies” but the lyrics were changed “to my husband has cancer”. The rest of the song didn’t match up, but that line kept repeating as I dried my hair. It’s how I knew that this was really a part of our life now – the next phase.
See, when Dave came home a couple of weeks earlier and said his ENT thought it was cancer, it didn’t seem real. In the tv medical dramas that I love to watch, such a diagnosis is always very dramatic and very immediate. The couple sit holding hands while the doctor delivers the devastating news often among tons of machines and other medical personnel. And, I know that this often the case in real life too, but not for us. Dave had seen the doctor that morning, gone back to work right after and came home at his usual time. He took his wallet and keys out of his pocket, put his phone down to charge and looked at the mail just like always. Then he sat down at the island while I finished dinner and said that the doctor thought it was cancer. They had scheduled a biopsy for 10 days later and that it was highly curable and it looked like we caught it early. We talked a little more while I finished dinner and then we ate. No dramatic music or emotional breakdowns, just dinner.
The next day he went to work and I went to the book store to load up on books about cancer, because that’s what we do when something new happens in our lives. These new books will go on the shelf next to how to knit, golf rules and etiquette and setting performance goals one of these days. We researched online, told our kids and went on a planned trip to visit his siblings. The thought of it all was there, the conversations about what if occurred, but we kept doing life as we waited for the biopsy.
The morning of the biopsy we headed to Baylor at an hour I’ve haven’t witnessed in real life since my children were babies. Dave went to surgery and I went to the waiting room. When it was over the doctor came out to talk to me and confirmed it was cancer and that it seemed small and localized. They would send it off for genetic testing to confirm it was the more treatable type of cancer and they would schedule Dave for a PET scan to make sure it hadn’t spread anywhere else. Again, no hand-holding dramatic moment, just me and the doctor in a room full of other people waiting for their loved one’s doctor and similar news. He repeated that if you have to have cancer, this is the one to have – “the good cancer” if you will. In terms of prognosis we are very fortunate and I never take that for granted, not for a second.
But as I dry my hair and the music plays – my husband has cancer and there is no good kind.