Tag Archives: cancer

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My journey is complete

Drum roll, please, for I am about to make an announcement.

The journey through darkness I have written about extensively on this blog since I lost my lovely bride, Kathy Anne, to cancer has for all intents reached its end.

So much has happened to my family and me since the worst day of our lives came crashing down on us. We lost the pillar of our family to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. She lost her valiant battle and left her family and friends in a profound state of grief.

I commenced my return back from the darkness by writing about that journey on High Plains Blogger. You know what? It helped me beyond measure. I found it within myself to share my grief with the whole world. The process filled me with hope that I could get through this period.

And I have done so!

I have told you about how I searched for light at the end of this journey. I am happy to report that the light on this day is far brighter than I ever imagined it would be immediately after Feb. 3, 2023 … which I have labeled as the worst day of my life.

Every one of those who comprise my worldwide network of friends and acquaintances have said the same thing: The pain never will go away. It will return without warning. You, though, will learn to manage it. You know what? They all were right! Here is a compilation of the entries I posted on High Plains Blogger.

Kathy Anne | Search Results | High Plains Blogger

I have learned that the overarching lesson in dealing with grief is to not let it consume me. It hasn’t. I am moving on with my life. Yes, I have some aspects of that new life to work on … but I can do so with a clear head and a heart that is not nearly as damaged as I reported earlier on this blog.

As one of my sons informed me, “If you can get something positive accomplished in spite of your grief, then you’re doing OK,”

There you have it … but I am happy to declare myself to be far better than OK. Kathy Anne would insist on it.

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Puppy Tales, Part 106: Phase 2 begins

Those of you who wonder about Toby the Puppy’s progress in his fight against cancer are entitled to hear the latest news.

He is doing well!

My pup has just begun the second phase of his treatment. He endured the radiation treatment. Toby’s appetite kinda/sorta went into the tank for a time after that phase of his treatment. Then it recovered. He has resumed his gluttonous eating habits, which of course pleases me to no end.

Now comes the chemo phase. The doctor’s office drew blood from my puppy this morning, then phoned me with the result. Toby’s doctor declared, “Toby is doing great.” Then she said that my puppy is “as good a candidate for chemotherapy as any patient I’ve ever had.”

She performed rectal exam and declared that his prostate “doesn’t seem as enlarged as it was before.” His cancer includes his prostate gland. I am trying to compute the 2+2 equation, and it is telling me the radiation helped control the cancer.

Now we proceed to Phase 2. Chemotherapy won’t be as frequent as radiation, but it will last bit longer.

My constant companion and best pal is a fighter. He is holding up quite well. I am grateful beyond all measure for the treatment he is getting. This has been the worst year of my life … hands down! I am harboring a measure of hope that the immediate future for my precious pup is looking a good bit brighter.

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Trek finds new traction

My bride once asked me — while we attended the 10-year reunion of my Portland, Ore., high school class — why I wasn’t reuniting with the female classmates gathered at a city park where we all met.

My answer to Kathy Anne: I was “painfully shy” as a teenager. I was uncomfortable talking to girls, I told her. Less than four years after graduating from high school, the sensational young woman whom I would marry broke me of my shyness … if you know what I mean.

I recently declared my intention to return to the world “social interaction” since losing my dear bride to cancer this past February. I am a lot more socially skilled than I was a teenager. I like talking to “girls” these days and if you’ll pardon my candor, I am pretty good at it.

I still get a bit jittery at the prospect of asking someone on a date. I still don’t always say the correct thing at precisely the correct moment.

I also realize something else. I am nearly 74 years of age. Thus, time is not my ally. I figure that if I am going to find someone with whom I want to spend copious amounts of time in my final years on Earth, I had better get busy.

Thus, my journey through the post-mortem grief of losing the love of my life is getting brighter seemingly each day. It isn’t quite so dark these days along the path I have been walking since I bid farewell to my beloved Kathy Anne.

My destination still is to be determined. As I shake off the shyness that inhibited me as a youth, I know I’ll find that place sooner rather than later.

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Journey nearing its end

My journey through the darkness has found sufficient light for me to declare that I believe it is nearing its end.

Does that mean the destination is near, that I have no more distance to travel before I can declare my life has been (more or less) restored since the passing of the only woman I’ve ever loved with all my heart?

It means only that I can see much more clearly these days, that I can profess openly that I am ready for a relationship if the right one were to present itself. I don’t mean to sound coy or cagey. I only mean to tell you the obvious, which is that my heart is likely to remain permanently damaged and that I am learning the complexities of dealing with the pain.

Kathy Anne’s brief but savage fight with glioblastoma at the beginning of this horrible year will remain with me for the rest of my life on Earth. She had six weeks from her diagnosis to the end. The oncologist who was scheduled to treat her called her form of cancer “the most aggressive” he ever has seen.

That was then. The here and now puts me in a position to start to move on, to commence with the rest of my life. My beautiful bride, Kathy Anne, was 71 when she passed. I am almost 74. She was in good health until, well, she wasn’t. I am in reasonably good health … at this moment. The events of this year have taught me the bitterest of lessons. One of them is that at my age, health can turn from blessing to curse in rapid fashion.

I am not going to sit around, awaiting the outcome I know awaits all of us. I intend to live, just as Kathy Anne insisted I do back when we both were young and had a long life ahead of us.

There will be more tales to tell about my journey as it progresses into the blinding light of the living. I’m not there yet.

But, damn … I believe it’s getting closer!

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Lots written already … more to come

Sometimes I am motivated by forces I cannot understand, let alone explain … such as the force this afternoon that pushed me into looking into the volume of blog posts I have published about the loss of my bride to cancer.

I looked at the archive and noticed that, well, holy crap, I have written a lot about this journey I am on.

Here’s the link that would give you an idea of what I’ve written already about Kathy Anne:

Search Results for “Kathy Anne” – High Plains Blogger (wordpress.com)

Now comes a question I have asked myself: When am I going to give it a rest? My answer is simple. Not any time soon.

I am motivated partly by selfish concerns. One of them is that writing about my bride is cathartic, therapeutic and even a bit comforting. We all need comfort, therapy and catharsis when circumstances compel them, right?

The worst day of my life is fading farther into the past. I get that I shouldn’t wallow in the intense pain that overwhelmed my family and me in the moment. I truly am not wallowing in it. As a matter of fact, I am actually getting past much of the pain as time goes by.

I also know that I am not alone in this grief. What we are feeling in this moment is very much like what billions of other families have endured since the beginning of time. They got through it. So will we.

However, my attempt by using the blog to comment on our loss is just to give some affirmation to others who have gone through what we are enduring. Therefore, the quest for support is not a one-way endeavor. I hope to give as much affirmation as whatever I receive.

So, I am going to stay on this topic, writing about my family’s journey as time and events compel me.

What’s more … writing this blog keeps me alert.

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Flaw appears in emotional armor

Readers of this blog have been informed of the progress I am making as I walk through the darkness of grief and intense pain over the loss of my dear bride, Kathy Anne.

The progress is real and for that I am glad to report I am doing better each day. However …

I have discovered a flaw in the emotional armor I have developed. It presented itself to me while Toby the Puppy and I were taking a quick stroll around our Princeton, Texas, block. It came in the form of having to tell someone who didn’t know about the loss my family and I have suffered.

A couple lives about six houses west of us. Puppy and I approached them as they worked in their driveway. Husband asked, “Where’s your better half? All I have seen is you lately.” I gulped, caught my breath and collected myself before telling him and his wife and daughter, “I lost her in February to cancer.”

I have been able to keep my emotions more or less in check for the past week or so. It’s getting easier … until I have to tell someone who doesn’t know the story. 

I walked through the quick version of the events that started this past autumn, then through the brain cancer diagnosis Kathy Anne received the day after Christmas, her post-surgery rehab stint and then the seizure that ultimately took her from us.

Telling that story — even in its abbreviated form — proved to be a difficult task this evening.

You know what? I got through even that struggle with relative ease compared to what I likely would have experienced, say, a month or two ago.

The journey continues.

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Getting relief from grief

Oh, how I enjoy writing this blog, particularly in recent months as I have sought to deal with my intense grief and heartache over the loss of my beloved bride.

Kathy Anne passed away from cancer in February. I have sought to tell my story without getting overly sappy. Sappiness might be part of my DNA, but I recognize that it isn’t for everyone. So I have sought to keep my blog posts about Kathy Anne relatively free of it.

I hope you’ll bear with me for the time being as I continue on this journey. Truth be told I am doing better today than I was a week ago. I thought I was regressing a bit, but it didn’t happen.

What do I credit for my continued recovery? I am going to give credit to this blog, which is my venue to tell you what is on my mind and in my heart.

Doing so has released much of the pain. Along the way I hope to have offered a lesson or two to those who are enduring similar tragedies.

I said at the outset that I am bolstered by the knowledge that I am far from the only human being ever to experience such a loss. Others have gone through it and come out OK on the other side.

I will too. Of that I am certain. Before I arrive, though, I will need to continue to express my thoughts on this blog.

Spoiler alert: There is more to come.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Up, down … then up

My emotions are playing tricks on my heart, as they keep spiraling high before they head in the other direction.

This latest journey to mend my heart has taken me nearly to the Atlantic Coast. I have shed a few tears talking about my bride, Kathy Anne … whose story you know by now.

At this very moment, though, I am feeling far better than I was the other day. Indeed, I seem to be turning some sort of emotional corner. The heart-mending will be a forever project, of that I am certain. I am understanding better the need to give myself more time.

It’s only been not quite six months since I experienced the worst day of my life. It seems like about, oh, an hour ago when I got the call from the hospital that I had lost my bride to cancer. The emotions still run raw on occasion.

But the upward swings are lasting longer than the downward spirals.

Thus, I am looking forward to more of the same.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Grief: individualized, indeed

All of my friends and family have told me this repeatedly since I ran smack into the worst day of my life.

Do not put a timetable on anything as it regards how you will mend your shattered heart, they have said. Grief is as individualized an emotion as any human being ever will experience.

I have learned that lesson as time marches on since the passing of my bride, Kathy Anne, to the ravages of cancer.

It’s coming up on my five months since she passed. It remains a struggle, to be sure. Friends who lost spouses a lot longer ago than I have tell me they still break out in tears without warning. They still struggle to hold their emotions together when certain dates come and go.

They all assure me that time will make it easier to cope with it, but that I should not expect it to disappear. It will stay with me for as long as I walk this Earth. I get it!

You see, this is the first such experience that I have felt. The loss of my parents was in one instance shocking and in the other was expected. The shocking loss of Dad in that boat wreck in September 1980 caused my blood seemingly to drain from my body the moment I got the news. Mom’s passing from Alzheimer’s complications four years later saddened me, but in a different way.

Time eventually mended my heart after their deaths.

This one feels unique. Kathy Anne and I were together for 51 years as husband and wife. Her diagnosis came the day after Christmas 2022. She was gone six weeks later. How am I supposed to cope with that, given the optimism to which we clung after hearing about her potential prospects once she began her treatment.

We didn’t anticipate the aggressive nature of the cancer that had struck her and the savagery it exhibited as it grew back.

All of this has contributed to my continued pain as I trudge along on this journey.

I know my family and friends are right. I know what to expect and I know what not to expect as I move ahead. I’ll just ask everyone to bear with me … and I know they will.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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She had astonishing intuition

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I have struggled with whether I want to share this blog post with you, but I have concluded that I need to offer a tribute to my late wife’s astonishing intuitive power.

With that, I’ll start at the end and work my way through it. I believe my darling Kathy Anne felt in her gut that she was sick a good bit before we received the cancer diagnosis on Dec. 26, 2022.

Kathy Anne did not reveal what she might have known. She was not wired to do that. It was her stoic nature that compelled her to keep it quiet.

I lost my bride to glioblastoma cancer of the brain on Feb. 3. She fought a brief — but very fierce — battle against the disease before it claimed her.

Now for a brief flashback.

We returned in October 2022 from a lengthy trip in our travel trailer. We hauled our trailer to the West Coast, visited family and friends. Then we returned home. On our way back to North Texas, Kathy Anne broached a subject I wasn’t expecting from her: She wanted to sell the RV. It was time, she said.

Kathy Anne laid out plenty of reasons for selling the vehicle: We had traveled far and wide in our three RVs; we were weary of battling the little problems that kept cropping up with them; we could sell the RV and then decide how we wanted to spend the rest of our life.

I signed on. Sure thing, I told her. I am ready to do something else.

So … we sold it. We pocketed the money and then, barely a month later, she began exhibiting some curious symptoms. She began losing her balance. She was stumbling — a lot.

Kathy Anne also had undergone a significant loss of weight over the course of several months. Our friends would comment on it and she would blow it off, saying she had spent a lot of time power walking through the neighborhood; that’s how the weight came off.

It sounds plausible to me even now. But … then came the decision to go to the hospital in McKinney the day after this past Christmas. The doc told her of the mass they found in her brain. Her reaction? Typical stoicism. “Let’s just get it out of there,” she said.

I look back on all this now and wonder: Did she know something she couldn’t share this past fall? 

I have told members of my family that Kathy Anne was the most intuitive individual I have ever known. As I recall the sequence I have just described, I am convincing myself that her marvelous intuition was at work. Quite obviously, I cannot prove any of this.

Thus, I have just explained why I have struggled to tell this story.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com