When Life Just Flat out Sucks

I guess the title may feel a bit dramatic, but for the first time in my short existence I truly can say that life just flat out sucks right now. It has sucked before, believe me, but this time it punched us in the face without any boxing gloves. It got hard to breathe at times, sometimes still is… you know. And I just felt the need to share this somewhere. I need to get my thoughts down and document the next days, months probably, of my life.

Just a few weeks ago I was extremely happy! I was so happy my heart was about to burst. Me and Pétur, my boyfriend of 8-9 years, were finishing school. I was finishing for the summer, he was finishing forever. We were in a period of bliss for some reason. I was (and still am of course) head over heels in love. We were looking forward to our first summer vacation in years! Complete freedom to do whatever we wanted. Since we are both from Iceland and had moved to Norway two years ago, we are away from friends and family – giving us a small feeling of that extra freedom to goof around and not give a damn. We had plans to fly over for just a few days to catch up and probably drink lots of beer.

My boyfriend’s parents came for a visit during his graduation, along with my dad. Me and my dad snuck away one evening to have sushi – just the two of us – which gave us time to have a long overdue bonding moment. This will definitely be one of my more precious memories with my dad. I shared with him my feelings of happiness, my plans for the summer to finally do what I’ve always wanted to do: get serious about drawing and writing a comic. He was supportive and I felt happy as we shared sake with some surprisingly good nigiri. All in all, pure happiness.

During this all, the blow was on its way and had been for two weeks, if I let myself be a bit *extra*. The thing is, my sweet wonderful gifted kind perfect boyfriend had a small lump in one of his neck muscles. We figured it was just a funky muscle knot and I’d attempted to massage it every now and then. However, it just got more and more lumpy. On top of that, he got night sweats. He showed the lumps to his mom the nurse and she insisted on him going to the doctor ASAP! They went to the ER but they just told them to meet his doctor at the clinic we are registered at. We managed to squeeze in an appointment soon after they had left Norway.

We had figured out that some of the lumps in his neck were lymph nodes. His doctor figured the same and tried to get us an appointment as soon as possible with an ENT specialist at St Olavs Hospital. He did not want to scare us too much but told us it could be something serious. We were given an appointment rather late – 20th of June. Note that as I’m writing this it is June 17th, Iceland’s national holiday. With stubbornness as well as help from doctors and nurses at St Olavs and at our clinic we managed to speed the appointment to last Monday, if memory serves. All the days are just a jumble in my head right now. Perhaps that’s why I want to get this in writing.

That appointment was the biggest blow for us.

We had an appointment squeezed in at around four o'clock, right after a wonderful doctor had finished surgery on a patient. The doctor looked at the lumps in Pétur’s neck, noted that other lymph nodes had started to swell up, stuck a camera down his nose, used ultrasound to examine his nodes, and finally brought out needles to do a biopsy. It was not pleasant to say the least. He stabbed various nodes four times on each side with needles but had to sort of push-and-pull constantly to get the tissue out. Finally, he told us he did not like what he saw and that it most likely was some sort of cancer.

Cancer. That word punches you in the stomach like nothing else, stuffs a cork down your throat and makes your eyes water up. Regardless of its severity it still manages to hurt you like nothing else… if that makes sense. I noticed how Pétur lost track of what was going on, how he just suddenly looked empty. I tried as hard as I could to remain calm. I was determined not to freak out. After all we had sort of expected something like this to happen but didn’t dare to talk about it all that much. As if saying the words would make it more probable. But as I said, my boyfriend is amazing and he managed to pull through, ask questions and finish the appointment, albeit in a daze. The doctor promised to call us the next day and tell us what he would find in the biopsy samples. I thanked him on behalf of my boyfriend for making the time to see us and we left the room.

As we got out of the building we finally let ourselves confront the emotions building up. At least… a bit. You know how it is when you see your partner crying – it just absolutely breaks your heart. The walk home was strange. Everything felt unreal, like I was going to wake up any second but the hand I was holding reminded me that unfortunately that was not going to happen. My eyes just kept betraying me, letting out a few drops every now and then. I’m weak like that. I cry too much.

When we finally got home the floodgates finally opened. I swear my face doubled in size. I was so mad, so sad, so god damn disappointed in life. Why? Why him? Why that hard working boyfriend of mine who just graduated with his MA degree in Architecture? Why not me? It’s my fault. It should have been me. I should not have been this happy. Too much happiness only results in something awful later. I should be the one going through this. I’m used to pain and I’m used to being sad and depressed. I can handle this. I deserve this more than him. I’m not that nice of a person.

Strangely me freaking out sort of forced him to calm me down. ME. The one NOTHING is wrong with other than being a crybaby. In that moment I promised myself that I would get my shit together and be nothing but supportive and brave… at least as soon as I could stop crying. You know how hard it is to stop once you start. I think my mom called me that night. I’d calmed down a bit but you know, just hearing my mom’s voice when I feel awful just opens the floodgates yet again. The rest of the evening was spent in front of the TV trying to forget.

The next day we went for our second hospital visit. Just one out of many to come. We met with the doctor who gave us the news that he had found cells indicating that this was Hodkin’s Lymphoma, a cancer that is derived in the lymph nodes when the production of a certain type of white blood cells goes wrong. We had suspected as much and to be honest, this was a relief. Hodkin’s is very treatable and much better than the alternatives (non-Hodkins, lung/throat cancers etc.). This time Pétur did not turn into an empty shell. He smiled, he asked about our next steps, shook his doctor’s hand and thanked him for everything. I felt proud.

It was time for us to call our families. I called my mom with the news (started crying – what a shocker!) and she gave me this line: You won the cancer lottery. Some words of comfort and wisdom cheered me up and gave me that extra strength I needed to be the supportive girlfriend. The rest of the day was spent downtown shopping for shoes. Pétur really needed these shoes.

And thus, a new chapter in my life has begun.

We met with a new doctor, Andreas. He is a cancer specialist and will take care of us during the next few months. We also have a nurse, Elin. She is nothing but sunshine and rainbows. I just want to make sure you all understand that this happened last Wednesday. Only two days after we met with the ENT doctor! Andreas scheduled us for x-ray, PET scan and MC scan last Thursday. He informed us that we would start chemotherapy next week. Unfortunately, it will cause Pétur to lose his hair. Those news hit him rather hard. I’m still trying to convince him that it’s the perfect opportunity for us to go as Saitama and Mob Psycho for Halloween. He’s not convinced. I’m not giving up.

The PET scan took three hours with all the waiting we had to do. For those of you who don’t know, you must fast for six hours, be injected with a radioactive isotope of some sugar solution, rest for 40 minutes and then lie in the scan for 20 or so minutes as they "take pictures" of the gamma rays leaving your body. It’s pretty neat but unfortunately, I could not sit and watch the scanning process. However, it is extremely uncomfortable as the needle used is a bit on the bigger side and you can really feel it in your arm apparently. Pétur had to be stabbed twice. Poor thing.

Yesterday (Friday) Pétur met with Andreas again for the results from the scan. Thankfully he only has swollen nodes in the neck area and in the armpits. There will be no need to take samples from his bone marrow – Pétur was nervous about that. After that we had a heart and lung test. I sat and watched as a doctor examined Pétur’s heart with an ultrasound. It was fascinating. The heart valves are more flappy than I expected as they open and close. Literally… they just flap flap flap! Finally, he had to have a final proper biopsy to make sure the diagnosis was 100% correct. This time it was surgery where they had to remove a few nodes. He got 7 stitches.

Again, I just want to mention that this whole process took us five days! We are exhausted form all these hours at the hospital, but at the same time we are extremely grateful for how fast this is happening. It’s been around four or five weeks since Pétur first noticed the lump in his neck and we are scheduled to start treatment next Thursday. Just thinking about how fast responding and wonderful the doctors and nurses have been makes me all emotional. Everyone greets us with a smile, everyone seems to care and understand how we feel.

I know this is not going to be easy and, hell, I’m still crying every now and then. I still have dark thoughts but I’m more determined than ever to be the support Pétur needs. I am looking up everything I should possibly know about chemo. What should we eat? How could he feel? What do we need to be careful about? How can I keep him as healthy as possible during all this? It dawned on me that my year studying food science and my one and a half year in chemistry/engineering is coming in handy as I look for information. It’s quite ironic. Just last year I was grieving these years as a waste of time while right now I’m thankful of the knowledge I have; I know a lot about food safety, microbes, cell function, nutrition and even biotechnology (a course I took on a whim this semester that goes into cancer, cells, antibodies etc.)! I can read medical texts with relative ease, I can sort out necessary information and quickly see what I don’t need. It kind of feels like I’ve been training for this moment and right now I’m thankful for these years I feared I had wasted. It makes me the ultimate caretaker.

Right now, I’m feeling a bit optimistic, having written my thoughts down makes me feel like I can stop thinking about them as much. I have more space in my mind to think about the future. Sure, our mood swings every day. Sometimes we feel good and joke around. Other times the reality of the situation sinks in a bit too much. Regardless of that, I’ve been focused on finding anything that is good about this experience. Maybe Pétur is not as ready to see the points I’ve been jotting down in the imaginary notebook in my head, but once this is all over – or once we get further into the therapy – I know we both will see how this has made us that much stronger.

I’ll keep on writing posts. Not as long as this one, believe me. I just had so much to get out. What I wish to do is to document his experience so I can look back on everything later. See if there is any progress. I also wish for this to be helpful for anyone else who might be going through something similar at some point.

Everything will be alright