Double Roll caring for your spouse with cancer while managing your emotional roller coaster.
April 2001 Journal His Post Surgery Pain, My Lesson
When the path seems heavy, I think of you, for I too have walked in those shoes.
He stared at me through drugged eyes, yet he looked right through me. He seemed to have disappeared deep inside himself.
Caring, learning, praying
I sat by his bed with a book opened to the same page for hours. He was irritable and short when he asked me to fix his pillows. “Don’t touch me, he said. I was exhausted and couldn’t understand his response to me. But when he said, “The pain is excruciating. A touch creates more pain.” I took back the selfish feeling of exhaustion.
If radical surgery could write the laws of physical chaos on his once healthy, athletic body ravaged by months of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, his physical condition post-surgery was the classic model when he murmured, “I am an organized train wreck.”
Bottomline I was a bystander
In essence, I was the bystander watching my husband suffer. I couldn’t relieve his pain nor ignore the emotional rollercoaster raising havoc within me. I did the next best thing I could manage and sat quietly, waiting beside his bed when he asked for or needed anything. Commenting would have served no purpose.
When his nurses arrived, I excused myself and walked to the hospital chapel. In that quiet, I let the tears flow and raised my husband in prayer. With calm emotions, I left the Chapel and returned to my husband’s bedside. My circumstances as a bystander hadn’t changed, but my attitude changed. I sat and prayed, knowing each moment he took a breath, he suffered.
What I Learned For me, the term bystander no longer applied. Yes, my roller coaster emotions were real, but God did not ignore them. He calmed me. When I sat quietly by my husband’s bed, I stood by him, ready to care, support, and love him, for we were tied together on this climb.
A PRAYER FROM THE HEART OF A SPOUSE
MAY HE BE YOUR HIDING PLACE WHENEVER YOU FEEL HELPLESS AND AFRAID. YOUR REFUGE AND STRENGTH TO CALM ROLLERCOASTER EMOTIONS AND YOUR FORTRESS AGAINST DESPAIR.
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