One In a Million
Jenny is lucky--to the extent anyone with stage IV pancreatic cancer can be identified as having good luck. This is month 13, soon to be month 14. The number of chemotherapy treatments she has had now are somewhere around 30. She is tolerating it. She was out all day today, again. Went to her acupuncturist, watched the service for her friend Lien who died of pancreatic cancer some days ago, picked up her Chinese herbs, was home briefly, and now is out with her friend Jeanne. Lien's illness went fast, and is much more typical of this illness. I am grateful and happy for all of the luck we have had, with regard to her longevity throughout this ordeal.
I read journal articles occasionally, which is essentially several times a week. I stumbled across an article quite recently which reinforces what I mean when I say Jenny has good fortune. Here are relevant excerpts:
Given refractoriness [refractoriness is chemotherapy resistance by the cancer, which builds over time] to the first 2 lines of treatment, it was not expected that this patient could have stable disease for so many months under the third line of treatment. In France, a retrospective series of 70 patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma showed that FOLFIRI regimen had a good outcome after the failure of gemcitabine- and platinum-base regimens.10 Like this case, most patients received 2 lines of ChT and progression-free survival with the previous line was less than 3 months. Even in this study, 2-year survival was, however, relatively low (32% from the initial diagnosis).
Entry 2. 10:58 p.m.
I am blue. I keep pushing on. I don't show it overtly. What is bothering me? My partner is dying and she loves someone else. I still can't get my head around it. Everyday, as I spend time with her, care for her, give her the support she needs and anyone would deserve, I
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| It could always be worse. |
Like I said, it's gnawing at me, but its not the only thing. I am preoccupied with her illness, trying desperately to understand it. The reading is dense, dry and bleak, and yet I am compelled to know whatever I can. It provides an illusion of control, I suppose.
I can't control my own life, I can't control the cancer, I can't control what a heart will feel or whether a person will lie. Sometimes I contemplate what going to hell or North Korea would be like because I really need a happier place to spend some time in repose.
I digress. So, I decided rather than keep it to myself, I needed to tell Jenny about this tonight.
I told her that I just wanted her to know that it is killing me, the fact she loves someone else. I broached it as best I could, with a proviso, typical lawyer, trying to indemnify against her throwing shit at the wall. She immediately started throwing shit at the wall. My legal writing skills clearly need a tune up.
It was immediately back to her embroidery about my transgression a decade ago, but it got worse. And as the fertilizer spewer filled the air at about 900000 ppm, I called her out, suggesting she quit throwing shit to foul up the works. She wanted to avoid dealing with my simple statement. I hadn't demanded she stop loving someone else, a pointless endeavor, or asked her to do anything, anything at all.
She switched gears, and the bullshit continued to spew. We were both talking loudly now, and I begged her again to stop spewing bullshit about something from so long ago, and then she started to insinuate and then almost outright accuse me of currently having an affair. I don't even leave the house, my car sits in Ravenna 15 miles away. I am here with the dogs and Abby all the time. When would I have time for an affair, I ask. You could be having an online affair, she suggests. I point out that I am with her whenever she is home, which has been rare these days (she was out all day and night, today, except for about 2 hours, from 9:30 a.m. until after 11 p.m., its amazing I could even start a fight) never more than a few feet from her on the couch. I ask her, for chrissakes, what more can I do? I cook, I clean, am responsible for the yard, the dogs, the shopping. I care for the kid, attend to Jenny's every need as asked or anticipated. And still the spewing continues, so thick it's a wonder I could breathe. She days I don't cuddle her. I swear to God, she said it. Now, I am comforting her a lot these days as my fear and anxiety about her impending death escalate. This entails holding her, rubbing her back, even holding her hand. It happens every day, and it is when I am the most struck by the fact at the very moment I am holding her, consoling her, offering her comfort and succor, she may be pining for or maybe even right then texting el pinché motherfucker. I say this to her out loud. She corrects herself and points out I won't even come in her room and cuddle her to sleep. She needed reminding at this point, so I explained again that she loves someone else and won't break it off. She says she loves us both. I respond that typically that any kind of polyamory deal is made before non-monogomy happens. It isn't a unilateral thing. Her approach is like saying, "I had a vascetomy last year, your honor," when asked why you were doing 70 in a school zone three weeks ago.
And on and on and on it goes and where it stops, nobody knows.
She texted me an apology as she was carried away by her collaborator, Sheila, who is unwelcome and forbidden in this house, and with whom I hope to never speak with again.
When I had my affair, that she has now embroidered from its actual few months into a three year ordeal and also in the same uttered sentence claimed it has stretched onward until today. We were told in therapy, and I had to agree, to cut off ties with those people who knew about my affair or helped facilitate it in even an ancillary way. I complied.
[My affair started around Mother's Day in 2012 and ended around Seafair time. It was tawdry and stupid. It started when we were separated by both space and agreement after Jenny had an affair with Jason. It was also at a time we were trying to figure out how or whether to fix a marriage that had just weathered Jenny's change of mind and attendant refusal to come to California, and her affair.]
And yet, she still sees Sheila (who went with her to Vegas with el pinche), refuses to stop seeing her, in fact. Moreover, while in Sheila's car Jenny texts me an apology which, given the location and proximity to Sheila when sent, makes it about as worthless as the paper it is printed on.
People make mistakes. People stray and return to the fold. Shit, I know that. It's why we chose Love at the Five and Dime as our wedding dance tune. Life is messy. and complicated. I know that. But she is dying and refusing to make this albeit hard choice to do the right thing. It is gutting.
Meanwhile, she sends the following text as I write this tome of a journal entry:
"I just wish I could die and stop making you miserable."
This maudlin, hyperbolic, manipulative practice of wishing she could do this or that, is just that; maudlin, hyperbolic and manipulative. Clearly, the solution here is much less stark or dramatic. Cut ties. Spend time with your family. It is a sacrifice, to be sure. But this feigning self-abnegation or groveling is costless. She doesn't have to change, and wants me to feel sorry for her, such that I can look past this refusal to do the simple and right thing. This tactic is employed rather routinely.Once, in the middle of the heated discussion, she looked me dead in the eye and offered, like it was a trillion dollar platinum coin or a gilded get-out-of-jail free card, "I have cancer," as her explanation as to why this is all ok.
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