I have been reflecting on the journey I have been on over the last few years. No one ever expects to get cancer, let alone one that is so rare they haven’t developed an effective treatment course that doesn’t involve carving pieces of the patient out. When I started in E.M.S. in 1994 I was young, relatively innocent, and by no means worldly. I worked my first cardiac arrest at the pig barn at the Minnesota State Fair, while blaring over the loud speaker of one of the attractions was the song “Drift Away”. I traveled a lot in the late 90’s and was blessed to meet three Presidents of the United States in the course of my job.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building myself up for the adventure that would come. In 2000 I for the most part landed back in Minnesota, I had broken up with my girlfriend at the time, a relationship that was literally all about the sex. That fall I met Mrs. ZM, we seemed to hit it off fairly well, she accepted that there were things my eyes had seen that were not the best memories to pull up in the early years of a relationship, she also helped me to feel complete at those times when I was far from feeling complete on my own. She had a cancer scare a decade ago now, which changed our lives, and we weathered that storm. The next great storm came about in 2014 when I was first diagnosed with cancer, when it was fairly simple we both took a collective sigh and put it in the pile of adventures we went on and moved forward.
In 2016 I learned that what I thought was a terrible storm two years earlier was only the storm front moving in, within the space of two months I would suffer one catastrophe after another with my cancer growing faster than expected, my bone graft being to small, my surgery failing, and the graft it self failing. With this came an inability to function sexually in any effective manner, this is a by product of the surgery and nerve damage something we are hoping can get resolved over the course of my next surgery. Through all of this Mrs. ZM has stuck by my side, I worried so much that I would lose her that it effected me terribly, it got really bad last week while she was gone in Chicago, I suffered multiple panic attacks and couldn’t figure out what was going on. After some thought I was realizing I was missing my most important piece, in chess the queen is arguably the most powerful piece on the board, she protects the king. That doesn’t describe what Mrs. ZM means to me though, she motivates me to get up and face the day, to try one more time to take back as many pieces of my life as I can, and to ultimately show cancer that it has no power over me. People always say “his strength inspires me” or “he is so brave” I try to tell them that I am not strong, I am lucky I have a wife who will allow me sometime to work through my emotions after a set back, like finding out my pelvis is fractured in several places and they can’t reduce my hip fracture. Then she says ” I am going to get lunch, if you want to come you need to get moving”
I started this journey alone so many years ago, then I got a first mate who made my voyage all the better, and I know that although the seas are rough now, and land is far from sight, that I have a partner who wont let us crash upon the shore line.
This song reminds me of her, I started it at the 18 second mark so you don’t have to listen to the whole intro.