Jan’s Silk Scarf
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes, 53 seconds
Home at Last
“It’s so nice to be home again,” Jan exclaimed as I opened the luggage and started unpacking. I stopped and looked at her and said, “I am happy wherever I am as long as I am with you!” Jan shook her head.
When I finished emptying the suitcases, the only item I did not have a place for was the silk scarf still in the plastic bag from the store. I looked at Jan with a questioning look on my face.
“Leave it on the dresser,” Jan said. “I can wear it in two weeks when we go to the city for our Broadway weekend.”
“You will look so beautiful when you wear it.”
Over dinner, we reviewed our vacation and what the week ahead looked like for both of us.
“Normal week for me,” Jan said.
Neither of us thought much about her going to the doctor’s office. We were both healthy.
Jan Has a Blood Cancer
“She has to get blood work first, and then we will call you to join her,” the nurse said. It was ten days after we had returned from Toronto. Jan had had blood work done twice by our primary care doctor. Both had indicated irregularities with her blood. Jan worried about the results, and I tried to reassure her that she would be OK.
At the Carol G. Simon Cancer Center, we met with Dr. Rujuta Saksena, an Oncologist and Hematologist; our primary care physician Dr. Emily Jefferies had referred us to meet with her. The purpose of the meeting was to find out what was wrong with Jan’s blood.
While Jan was with the nurse, I paced around the waiting room not only to get my hourly steps but to keep myself busy. I had not done this when our sons were born as I was next to her all the time. But today, I was alone and very nervous.
I heard them call my name and almost ran to the door to join her. I held her hand as we walked down a short hallway and into an examination room.
Dr. Saksena was very professional, reassuring, personable, and knowledgeable. After asking Jan a few questions about her work, life, and interests, she explained that she explained that she had examined Jan’s blood and did not have a definitive answer to the cause of the low blood counts.
However, she said that it was a blood cancer and that they would know more, including the type of cancer and how to treat it after further analysis.
I started to cry, and Jan began to shut down and hold her emotions inside of her. Dr. Saksena handed me tissues and reassured us that we need not be concerned as we still needed to determine the type of cancer. She stressed that we had found cancer early enough to be very treatable.
We exited the room after a few questions and scheduled a follow-up appointment. We discovered it had rained when we left the center, and steam rose from the street. Without an umbrella, we stood under the awning and waited for the last drops to fall.
I pulled her toward me and hugged her tightly. “We are going to be OK, dear,” I said. “I know I should not have cried, but I could not help it.”
Jan started talking about her favorite role in life, being a bulldozer. “That’s how I will manage this,” she said. I could feel her pulling away and bottling up her emotions.
“This time, that will not work,” I said. “We will need all of the support and help we can get.”
She kept repeating her mantra. “It’s worked every other time, and it will work this time.”
We talked without resolving anything. We agreed to keep talking.
That is how Jan’s nineteen-month cancer journey began.
Despite my tears, I was confident that she would be OK at that moment. We had an excellent medical team and would soon have a treatment plan.
Loving and taking care of her was a commitment I made to Jan not only on the day we married but every day from the day we met.
After almost 48 years, I recently lost my wife, Jan Lilien. Like The Little Prince, Jan and I believed that “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” This blog is a collection of my random thoughts on love, grief, life, and all things considered.
