The Caregiver by Jeff Oliphant

The Caregiver   

by Jeff Oliphant  

In October of 2006 My bride Tracy was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. Little did we know that our lives would change forever! When your world is turned upside down by a cockroach of a disease like cancer you can choose two roads; curl up in a corner, feel sorry for yourself, and let the cockroach cancer take whatever laughter, joy, or love for life you have left , or choose to live! We decided to choose the road of living, loving, laughing, and the loyalty road, because that’s what was the smart approach to take  As for the cockroach cancer... It no had idea the fight it was going to endure in the years to come!  

In 2006 from November to New Year 2007, Tracy had bilateral mastectomies, two drains (I got the nickname Dr McDrainy, because I helped Tracy empty the fluid from her surgery... So I got that going for me :), a new Lexus, and reconstruction surgery (She will always have bigger, never sag boobs. So she has that going for her :) (did you catch the reference to Princess Warrior?) In Jan 2007, Tracy started her chemotherapy. A/C/T = nasty stuff! We would go up to Hooksett, NH and spend 4-5 hours every other week getting infusions and one was called Red Devil. Are you kidding me!!??  At the time you are scared and confused and listen to whatever the doctors say! They are the specialists after all!? I would sit with my DVD player and watch season after season of the HBO show 'The Wire' to pass the time as Tracy would sleep through most of her treatment. I always had one eye on the DVD and one eye on Tracy at all times.  They had snacks so when Tracy woke up she would look up with her gorgeous face, smile and eat a granola bar. I learned very quickly that the 6-7 days following chemo were very tough on Tracy; lots of pain, nausea, and countless other side effects, such as Neulasta, a shot that stimulates and helps with white blood counts to bring the the levels up. Well, the pain associated with the drug in Tracy’s words were unbearable! Yet not to long ago I saw a commercial for the drug on TV! (No Way Really?!) Yet during this entire time, Tracy would not use Cannabis? ( We had no clue at the time. More about that later in the story) As a caregiver my job is to keep things as normal as possible when there is nothing normal about the situation. I was scared, confused, angry.  I felt like I had been hit in the head with an old school 1970’s cast iron shovel! I found myself going into a dark place, but I pulled myself back into the game and reminded myself that this is the time to shine as a caregiver and whatever the situation was handed to us going forward. I was ready for the challenge! 2007-June of 2013 were the remission years! We lived like game of throne kings and queens. Family, traveling, kids, family, new jobs, parties, our lives were thriving! Then June 13, 2013 our lives would be changed forever! Tracy was diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast cancer! The breast cancer had spread all over her body as if a grenade had exploded inside her! I remember being in the hospital with Tracy and doctors from all departments sadly telling us the dire situation. One doctor hinted to me to start getting our things in order. “ Things in order!?” “What the f is metastatic cancer?!” It’s when a cancer decides to move from one part of the body to another. It becomes incurable. In Tracy’s case her breast cancer decided to spread to different parts of her body yet it’s still treated as breast cancer?! The only problem is that it becomes very difficult to treat, it changes form, it hides, it messes with you mentally and physically and it goes to unimaginable places. It does whatever it can to survive then conquer! The Suck Bag cancer is very smart! Tracy came back home, where for the next few weeks I noticed her situation was getting worse not better! The pain pills, chemo (Gemzar no hair loss. That’s very important to a woman, I found this out with her first of many battles with cancer she would cry about her hair, but she had a beautiful head that you could kiss and rub. Like an old style 1974 whiffle :) I then realized I was losing my Bride! The feeling you have is indescribable. I just wanted take away the suffering and make it all normal again! We were in our foxhole, the shells were exploding around us and I needed to get her quickly to the nearest, safest, perfect fox hole. Tracy would not survive very long if we stayed in this situation!! I then got a call from a very close family member. “Jeff take a look at what is happening in the world of Cannabis, many people suffering from all types of ailments and using Oils, flowers, edibles to use it as a medicine for quality of life.” I’m thinking pot, grass, boo, weed, marijuana, how can this help?! “  Jeff, he kept saying just research it!”  I talked it over with my bride and we researched, and researched and researched. We decided to give it a go and use Cannabis as a medicine to help my Bride. I would crawl across hundreds of miles on sharp scrap metal if it helped my bride have a better quality of life! I called another very close friend and told him the situation, and what medicines we needed. 2 hours later he had the medicines we researched and that we needed to start Tracy on he new Cannabis therapy journey. I did procrastinate for a while, and I have to credit this friend, because he was the one who pushed me to go up north and get the medicine! I was scared, confused, in a really fucked up place mentally, but the life of a caregiver must go above and beyond at all costs, taking on the unknown...sometimes it meant taking risks. I flew up north and ext to me on the plane were a young couple that DID NOT believe in hygiene! I’m trying to keep it together and accomplish my secret Cannabis mission, and I’m gagging every time they moved. Which is a lot on a 1 1/2 hour flight.  I landed, hooked up a get away car and drove to pick up the Cannabis medicine. I started my journey back home in the get away car (Dodge Avenger) with medicine, fantasy football satellite radio, snacks, cruise control, and 14 hours to think about how I’m going to keep my Bride alive! I did the trip in two shifts I stopped off in Albuquerque, NM and spent the night at a 3 star hotel. I didn't sleep that night as you could imagine, but I had the medicine and I was half way home and I just wanted to be with Tracy! I can drive like a seasoned pro since I learned how to drive long distances on little sleep with the Dipper! Didn’t get scared because I was full of adrenalin and I was half way home! As I was leaving New Mexico around 6am air balloons were rising into the air and I remember for a brief moment that everything was going to be ok. I made it back to AZ! Yep the secret mission was a success I ditched the get away car and our lives would never be the same again! My bride and I looked at the medicine for a while and I was the first to try it out so I was the first guinea pig.  It was this dark oil in a tube, very concentrated so I put about one rice grain size and swallowed! I can ingest Cannabis with the best of them, but let me tell you!! I was frozen on the couch for 4 hours, yet I was feeling very euphoric. It was very calming and my anxiety was gone! “Woo Hoo”, I thought, my Bride is going to like this. It’s September 2013 and the dosing starts out very small. Literally with one rice grain in the morning and one at night. The next week 2 rice grains, and continue to up the dose little by little getting her body to build up a tolerance. By the first month,  I notice many positive changes, she was eating, sleeping, without nausea, less pain, less fatigue, and a lot less depression! All good, especially while taking chemo! I had her up to almost gram a day by November and the real real test was about to face us. How will her scans come back!? I had a feeling they might be good because of the way she was feeling. I do know this as a caregiver and I keep a close eye on Tracy and there are certain signs to look for.  I can tell when she is in a good place by her physical appearance, if she has energy, the color of her skin, emotionally, weight-wise, and in her engagement in everyday life. We were coming back to life from a near death experience with cockroach cancer! The night before a results appt. is a night of no sleep and anxiety for both my bride and me. We walked into the office hand and hand to get the results!  “All mets have run away except mets in the spine”. Now some people might look at this as still scary news!  It’s still in her bones but all the countless other mets have run away and hidden for now. Now I’m not saying Cannabis is a cure but I do know that I’m finding out that suck bag cancer does not like cannabis at all! Tracy’s feeling good, looking beautiful as ever and the mets have run off. We made it safely to the next foxhole holding each other close but we discovered that cannabis would become a huge ally!! This would not be our last foxhole! We continued to use western medicine and cannabis to battle the suck bag cancer along with oils and diet. My bride got her cannabis card and we started using it as a medicine for daily use immediately. We started to read blogs, websites, learning as much as we could. The tumors were reduced to near remission. I reduced the amount of oil at this point and gave her only a small amount a day as we we told we could go down to a maintenance dose as you will. A decision I regret to this day! A year passed, we lived, loved, and thrived again like queen and king. We made another trip up north together to get more cannabis and as it turns out the medicine man turned out to be an asshole to put it kindly. Yes he got us the medicine, but when Tracy had a few questions about the oil he acted as if he was being bothered and he was about as compassionate as a great white shark eating a meat bone! We drove home together 10 hours straight and I’ll never forget how we talked for 10 hours straight. We were laughing, crying, telling stories, listened to all kinds of music, we stopped along the way because Tracy had to put herself in 4 states at once. We stopped along the way to just see the sights. Ahh, the little things in life that make it all worth the hell we go through every day!  Well, the shells started landing all around our lovely foxhole again in October 2015 when my Brides cockroach cancer had regrouped and attacked the peritoneal and omentum, the lining area that that protects our organs . It is rare ( of course). Because of the cancer, it was blocking her ureters so she had to get stents placed into her ureters in November because her kidneys were being damaged. Most people have two ureters... my bride has three :) need I say more:) Again, the diagnosis from the doctors “get your things in order” apparently this is worse than having multiple mets in your body like in 2013!? Are you fucking kidding me! My bride hid the diagnosis from me, she new how dire the situation was. I didn’t want to know and I just wanted to care give for my bride like I have from the very first day I met her. So I did. We read the diagnosis together later and there was only one paragraph of information. It basically said a death sentence! Why did I put my bride on a maintenance dose! How am I going to get my bride to the nearest safest foxhole, I kept thinking?! As a caregiver you learn very quickly to respond to the suck bag cancer. “Wait a minute” I’m going to fight it just like last time with heavy doses of cannabis along with some western medicine. This time we will use cannabis as the FIRST line of defense against cockroach cancer! I had two weeks before my bride again had to start the chemo pill, I had to act fast! I got more oil and started dosing,  quickly upping the dose for the next two weeks. As she went through chemo we not only noticed that her side effects were less brutal ( side effects from many western medicines can be horrible on the body and with no idea of long term effects) she was getting off many medicines that caused those nasty side effects (not one pain pill for 2 1/2 years), eating, sleeping, laughing, loving everything that cockroach cancer hates. We ran from the foxhole searching for a new foxhole for 6 months and I had her back and hand the whole time. I took a few hits and fell down a few times during this fight and my bride was there to pick me up:) As we zigged and zagged,  calm, cool and collected, we found one! Once again her suck bag cancer was in remission. What?! But they said you had no chance? Doctors to this day can’t understand how my bride is still alive! I can believe it! The celebration was cut short yet again :( 

We found out that my bride’s cockroach cancer has attacked and invaded many of her bones, a surprise attack at night with heavy artillery.  I feel as if we are surrounded this time and finding a safe, comfortable foxhole is not going to be easy. We will use the same strategy as before with different strains of cannabis, Love, laughter, friends , family, Pugs, western medicine, strength and WILL. Every ally will be needed for this next battle.  

When I first met my bride and on the day we said our wedding vows, the most important words were “in sickness and in health, in death do us part” those are words we live by not just speak! I’ve learned that no matter what life throws at you caregivers are in the trenches every day, and during good and bad times it can be a brutal job at times, but a very rewarding job at the same time. It was my bride that showed me how to turn a shitty situation into living, laughing and loving. Every day as a caregiver I find away to make sure my bride’s day is a little more special. We all know what buttons to push to put a smile our partner’s face, that’s why you’re together in the first place. Push those buttons, study those buttons everyday. Whether it’s a song, a candy bar, a loving phrase, furniture, anything that betters that day and do it everyday and often! You can push the buttons that YOU know upset and stress out your partner, then turn and say “I Love You?!” Bullshit. That’s a selfish hypocrite and then you wonder why you’re in the dog house!? We caregivers must understand that if we are a mess, imagine what your partner is going through! When you push the happy buttons it’s the greatest feeling in the world. Sometimes it doesn’t work but I effing try and I never stop and neither should you! Separate the men from the boys and the woman from the girls. We have to take care of ourselves, it’s hard to figure out when your world gets turned upside down! Ask for help! You're going to need it! 

So here we are again. My bride and I.   

Looking for our safe foxhole. 

I will grab her hand and take many bullets along the way and do what ever it takes to find it! My bride has not given up the fight!

I want to thank everybody who has helped my bride and I through this battle! Your texts, snapchats, letters, cards, visits, whatever it is,  it ALWAYS puts a skip in my brides step and we love you for that :)

If one day, I reach for my brides hand and she decides not to hold it to find the next foxhole... I will understand why. It’s a double edge sword.  I have been given the greatest gift ever. The gift of Tracy Knox Oliphant. Every day for the last 14 years but suck bag cancer wants to take her from me! Fuck you cockroach cancer! We are not losing a battle. As long as we live, love, laugh and keep smiling - suck bag cockroach cancer is losing miserably! :)