This time I had a new support group, my Wednesday night cancer caregiver ladies. They showed me tremendous compassion. They said, "With the bipolar and the heart condition and the cancer, he has no right to ask you to endure more, especially gambling. Tell him he needs to sign over the house and the real property to you. Give him a choice. Tell him he can either sign over the real properties to you and give you a divorce on paper but you'll stay with him through everything or he can split everything down the middle and you can get a real divorce and go your own ways."
I liked that gutsy advice. It was time for you to pony up something for me. I have always been the financial rock in this relationship. You have frittered away any penny you've ever had. Your inheritance, in excess of $160,000, was squandered on toys and poker. The money you made from your business many years ago and the from the sale of properties you had owned, were completely gone. Not only were they completely gone but you had further encumbered yourself with student loans. I knew nothing of this before we got married. We got married before people commonly made financial disclosures before walking down the aisle. This turned out to be a critical mistake on my part. I should have asked you for a full financial accounting and a financial commitment to putting something into the house I owned. Ah, but hindsight is so crystal clear, isn't it?
I gave you several days to think about how you would protect me. I asked you periodically what you had come up with but all you could think of was getting a divorce, splitting everything down the middle, and remaining together like we have been. That way, you said, I'd be protected for 'my' half.
In 1993, during one of your most famous manic episodes, my dad had said that you were the most selfish person he'd ever known. Ah, yes, there's another one of those comments that lived on in my head, not because I was offended at what my father had said about my husband but because I had begun to feel it was true. Give me half??? Throw me a BONE!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Our Anniversary
Part of your amazing 'surprise' timing has always been that it ruins something wonderful for me. Our anniversary, our 22nd, was coming up two days after your phone call 'surprise'. My school was having its annual Cinco de mayo fiesta and, as usual, I was in charge of the prizes. It's been my cheesy job for the past twenty-some years and it's worked out well for me. I have it down to a science now.
In light of your news and my request for you to think of some way to protect me, I didn't feel it was appropriate to celebrate this dubious event. I let the day slip by without mention of the anniversary. It would have felt hypocritical. The next morning was Saturday and you asked, "When's our anniversary?" "Yesterday," I answered. You said, "We'll have to have a belated celebration." I said, "No, that's all right." Just skip it.
It was the beginning of May and what was to come shocked and hurt me. But I will adjust and I will go on. It is better for me to have found out where I stand than to have gone on with someone who valued me so little. I sat on our dilemna, waiting for you to think of a way to protect me. My cancer support group was a place where I was being given ideas about how to speak up for myself.
In light of your news and my request for you to think of some way to protect me, I didn't feel it was appropriate to celebrate this dubious event. I let the day slip by without mention of the anniversary. It would have felt hypocritical. The next morning was Saturday and you asked, "When's our anniversary?" "Yesterday," I answered. You said, "We'll have to have a belated celebration." I said, "No, that's all right." Just skip it.
It was the beginning of May and what was to come shocked and hurt me. But I will adjust and I will go on. It is better for me to have found out where I stand than to have gone on with someone who valued me so little. I sat on our dilemna, waiting for you to think of a way to protect me. My cancer support group was a place where I was being given ideas about how to speak up for myself.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
April 28
April 28 will ring in my brain for the rest of my life. On this day the catalytic event happened.
There I was at work, minding my own business. It was 2:45 and I was looking to leave soon to go to my weekly appointment with my therapist. My cell rang. It was you. You asked me if I had a couple of minutes to talk. You said you didn't want to lie to me anymore, and you didn't want to put Laura in the 'middle' and in a place where she would have to lie to me, too. Did I ever mention that before I met you I loved surprises? You ruined surprises for me. Your surprises were always the worst, most frightening things that ever happened to me. I used to love it when people would tell me they had something to say to me. My first husband used to get a look on his face when he had a surprise, and I used to get so excited. And he always had something lovely or thoughtful. But you fixed that. Your first surprise sent me reeling, and all the others after that were equally as awful. Oh, boy, another one of your surprises. How badly was this one going to suck? You just wanted to let me know that you are gambling again. Oh joy! My worst nightmare returns! How fun is that? You said you had always gambled, you were gambling now, you were always going to gamble and that's "just the way it is".
"Well," I said. "I was hoping you had maybe realized you are a crappy gambler and that losing your entire inheritance at the poker table would have changed your mind about gambling. I see that I have enabled your gambling by not asking you to work or contribute to the household. There are going to be some changes around here. You are going to have to start making a financial contribution and you are going to need to pay your medical costs."
You mumbled something about giving me 25% of your winnings. You gotta be kiddin! Mumbling was a good way to make that lame offer. You quickly agreed to paying your medical costs; they're small.
"And you will need to think of a way to protect me from any financial disasters you leave me with if you lose control and run up gambling debts and then die."
You said you would never let that happen. Yeah, right. Like the other times. Right.
I went to my therapist's. I didn't have to worry about what to discuss.
I went to my cancer support givers group. They said my news sucked. After all that was going on in my life, I didn't need that too. It just sucked.
I agreed.
There I was at work, minding my own business. It was 2:45 and I was looking to leave soon to go to my weekly appointment with my therapist. My cell rang. It was you. You asked me if I had a couple of minutes to talk. You said you didn't want to lie to me anymore, and you didn't want to put Laura in the 'middle' and in a place where she would have to lie to me, too. Did I ever mention that before I met you I loved surprises? You ruined surprises for me. Your surprises were always the worst, most frightening things that ever happened to me. I used to love it when people would tell me they had something to say to me. My first husband used to get a look on his face when he had a surprise, and I used to get so excited. And he always had something lovely or thoughtful. But you fixed that. Your first surprise sent me reeling, and all the others after that were equally as awful. Oh, boy, another one of your surprises. How badly was this one going to suck? You just wanted to let me know that you are gambling again. Oh joy! My worst nightmare returns! How fun is that? You said you had always gambled, you were gambling now, you were always going to gamble and that's "just the way it is".
"Well," I said. "I was hoping you had maybe realized you are a crappy gambler and that losing your entire inheritance at the poker table would have changed your mind about gambling. I see that I have enabled your gambling by not asking you to work or contribute to the household. There are going to be some changes around here. You are going to have to start making a financial contribution and you are going to need to pay your medical costs."
You mumbled something about giving me 25% of your winnings. You gotta be kiddin! Mumbling was a good way to make that lame offer. You quickly agreed to paying your medical costs; they're small.
"And you will need to think of a way to protect me from any financial disasters you leave me with if you lose control and run up gambling debts and then die."
You said you would never let that happen. Yeah, right. Like the other times. Right.
I went to my therapist's. I didn't have to worry about what to discuss.
I went to my cancer support givers group. They said my news sucked. After all that was going on in my life, I didn't need that too. It just sucked.
I agreed.
In Time
In time you started reacting differently. I already knew you had regretted having my dad move in with us. I knew you wanted him to move out. How could we ask that of him after we had cleaned out both his homes and rented them out? How could we oust an 89-year-old? It just didn't seem right. I know he can be critical; he's my father, after all. After he moved in with us and he got well, he became his critical self again. Not as bad as you or your father, but critical nonetheless. Hmmmmmm, who's gonna take care of you after this? Who's gonna take in a critical 65-year-old with manic depressive illness and pancreatic cancer????? Good question. At this point, it won't be your daughter.
Another thing you did was start to accuse me of inappropriate behavior with other men. A friend I text message, I could understand, but our daughter's boyfriend? You ripped me a new one the night before Easter, telling me I was inappropriate and where in the world did I ever learn to do that? Did my mother act that way around guys? Around my boyfriends? Oooooooh, don't start with my mother. You should know better than to mess with people's mothers that way. But I didn't have much of a comeback; I didn't think I'd done anything wrong. I was hurt and somehow made to feel shamed, and I didn't sleep much that night. I felt that if I wasn't doing anything I considered to be wrong, then what I needed to do was be faithful to myself and not stop being who I am.
I should have known that was the beginning.
Another thing you did was start to accuse me of inappropriate behavior with other men. A friend I text message, I could understand, but our daughter's boyfriend? You ripped me a new one the night before Easter, telling me I was inappropriate and where in the world did I ever learn to do that? Did my mother act that way around guys? Around my boyfriends? Oooooooh, don't start with my mother. You should know better than to mess with people's mothers that way. But I didn't have much of a comeback; I didn't think I'd done anything wrong. I was hurt and somehow made to feel shamed, and I didn't sleep much that night. I felt that if I wasn't doing anything I considered to be wrong, then what I needed to do was be faithful to myself and not stop being who I am.
I should have known that was the beginning.
How It Started
How did this all get started? Was it in early March when we giddily put you on Medicare? We were so happy that you were able to choose your doctors after having been locked into Kaiser and their 'standard of care' where you had been given basically a death sentence. Yet, somehow you'd been given a reprieve. After your tumor had been strangling your duodenum and you had gone through an intestinal duodenal bypass, your tumor somehow stopped growing. CT scans revealed a tumor that remained unchanged throughout the months following the bypass and initial rounds of chemo. But Kaiser was not in a position to use anything experimental on you. They participated in no clinical trials and dared not try anything new. When your 65th birthday month arrived, we were ready to move. On the first day of the month a person turns 65, that person is on Medicare. You had done your research, your legwork. You had been in contact with PCAN (Pancreatic Cancer Action Network), you had a PAL there, and she had sent you all kinds of information on who was doing what in the world of pancreatic cancer. You had chosen your doctors carefully. And best of all, you had found an oncological surgeon who would do the surgery that all of the doctors at Kaiser had said could not ever, I mean not ever, be done. I was proud of the way you had advocated for yourself. I used to always think that if you, Bill, didn't want to hear 'no' for answer, you didn't. This was a perfect example of that. Kaiser doctors had said 'no, you'll never find anyone who would dare operate on your tumor, and if you did, he would probably be some kind of charlatan.
Our first meeting was with the surgeon. He ordered another, more sophisticated CT scan, and then told you that he could do the surgery if the tumor shrank to half its current size. Next we went to the oncologist who would put you on a chemo regimen called FULFOX. He had had some success with it and he was very optimistic about your prospects for tumor shrinkage. We met with him and his physician's assistant. You gave them your medical history and listed the current meds you take. You have several conditions: diabetes, heart disease and a triple bypass, and manic depressive illness. Your diabetes is relatively new, and I have often wondered if it wasn't an early sign of the pancreatic cancer. But your older sister, your only sibling, also has diabetes, so when you were diagnosed with it, we didn't give it much thought.
Once you started FULFOX, you were glad. The side effects were much milder than the ones with the Tarceva and Gemsar you had been getting at Kaiser. You went for two hours in a chair every other week, and then you wore a chemo fanny pack for two days following your chair visits. You had diarrhea but that has been a constant since your intestinal bypass eight months ago. For those days when you wore the pack, you were tired. You took naps and spent a lot of time in the horizontal position. That was okay. You hadn't worked in years and I had three more years before I was going to retire. Anyway, I love my job. For the past twenty six years I have basically jumped out of bed with a big smile on my face and headed off to work. There have been a few exceptions, but not many. But maybe that was one of those things I didn't analyze well enough. Maybe that was one of those 'problems' I didn't attend to as I should have.
Our first meeting was with the surgeon. He ordered another, more sophisticated CT scan, and then told you that he could do the surgery if the tumor shrank to half its current size. Next we went to the oncologist who would put you on a chemo regimen called FULFOX. He had had some success with it and he was very optimistic about your prospects for tumor shrinkage. We met with him and his physician's assistant. You gave them your medical history and listed the current meds you take. You have several conditions: diabetes, heart disease and a triple bypass, and manic depressive illness. Your diabetes is relatively new, and I have often wondered if it wasn't an early sign of the pancreatic cancer. But your older sister, your only sibling, also has diabetes, so when you were diagnosed with it, we didn't give it much thought.
Once you started FULFOX, you were glad. The side effects were much milder than the ones with the Tarceva and Gemsar you had been getting at Kaiser. You went for two hours in a chair every other week, and then you wore a chemo fanny pack for two days following your chair visits. You had diarrhea but that has been a constant since your intestinal bypass eight months ago. For those days when you wore the pack, you were tired. You took naps and spent a lot of time in the horizontal position. That was okay. You hadn't worked in years and I had three more years before I was going to retire. Anyway, I love my job. For the past twenty six years I have basically jumped out of bed with a big smile on my face and headed off to work. There have been a few exceptions, but not many. But maybe that was one of those things I didn't analyze well enough. Maybe that was one of those 'problems' I didn't attend to as I should have.
A First Entry
And so it goes that what started as a blog to help me deal with your diagnosis of pancreatic cancer has evolved into a blog about divorce. But it's not just about divorce; it's about bipolar meds' efficacies being interfered with by chemotherapy, about old hurts, new hurts, anger and insanity. And me, where do I stand in all of this? What unforgivable sins have I committed? Where did I turn a blind eye to things that should have been handled, talked through, resolved? Did I pooh-pooh something that should have been given more attention? Or, like my therapist says, is it about the person I chose? I suspect it's all of the above.
A life that used to revolve around chemo appointments, CT scans, cancer support groups, yoga classes, work, looking for quality time and special cancer-fighting diets, is now full of emails to and from lawyers, contentious interactions, accusations and court dates. This blog will attempt to memorialize all of these things and integrate them into the context of cancer and all the rest that represented our lives for twenty-two years of marriage and four years of dating. How this will end, I don't know. God is in control. I can only hope that what I do conforms to what He wants from me.
A life that used to revolve around chemo appointments, CT scans, cancer support groups, yoga classes, work, looking for quality time and special cancer-fighting diets, is now full of emails to and from lawyers, contentious interactions, accusations and court dates. This blog will attempt to memorialize all of these things and integrate them into the context of cancer and all the rest that represented our lives for twenty-two years of marriage and four years of dating. How this will end, I don't know. God is in control. I can only hope that what I do conforms to what He wants from me.
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