So This Is June

Dear all of Keep Your Cool’s sweet readers, This is Lorraine and I wanted to write to you to thank you for all your support. I know we are not even halfway through this but we cannot go on without stopping to thank you all for being readers, supporters, and caring listeners. We want to thank you for the phone calls, the emails, the baskets, the flowers and the dinners. Jason and I could not have kept going on everyday, to work and to events without all of this support. June was a difficult month to swallow. It was difficult just as well for us to say hello to sunny July, as we had so many plans for this summer, you know how much we love to camp, hike and the infamous beach party we had been talking about all winter.

Our bon fire smores were not the only thing that had to be postponed. Jason and I had planned on expanding our family next year. I know, we had been saying that since we got married almost four years ago, “next year, next year”. I think we just said that to buzz “the question” off. But after some discussion, better footing in our careers and the closer it seemed we had become to purchasing our first home, we had finally decided to make room in our lives for another. Then came the news and we soon found out that after treatment Jason could become sterile. We were recommended to California Cryobank by the oncologist and with the encouragement of both our moms and the financial help of an organization called Fertile Hope, a foundation through Lance Armstrong, we were able to put our plans away until “next year”. The question, “so when are you guys having kids?” seems no harm, but when you have gone through the process of banking and looked into Artificial Insemination costs and success statistics, that question seems to weigh on my heart.

During the month of June we were both running on a few hours of sleep during the day. We would wake up almost every hour with nightmares and Jason with aches, pains and the symptoms of his cancer. The nightmares were the scariest. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and praying. Praying for strength, praying for Jason, praying that nobody would break into our home and that the weird noises outside would quiet down. For Jason the nightmares would wake him and he felt the need to wake me up and tell me about every single one of them. I would pray for him and hold him tight. For the aches and pains, well my heart only hurt for him there was nothing I could do. I remember one night just recently, his vein where they injected the chemo was throbbing. He could not sleep. Of course, he says “baby, are you awake?” and of course I am awake. We got up and we sat at the kitchen table at three in the morning. We knew we had to get dressed for work in a few hours, but we just sat. And stared. He held his arm. I held my head. Luckily the pain in his vein has almost gone away. And for the nightmares, well I think our anxiety and shock over this whole news is slowly diffusing. But every now and then he still wakes me and says scratch my neck, rub my back, scratch my chest and with one eye catching my sleep and the other eye on him, I do it.

I love this man with all my heart.

XOXO

Lorraine