Anytime I'm tempted to ask God why He chose us for these battles, I get a text or email or phone call from some newly diagnosed cancer patient or their caregiver or their best friend or their mom. They're hoping I can help them get into MD Anderson or navigate the process or advise them on ways to combat treatment side effects. You name it, I've heard it, seen it, felt it.
Bill and I have grown weary of the cancer journey. It is a race with no finish line. You just keep running and running and running. One year ago we heard that his disease had likely recurred and spread to the prostate. Had this been true, it would have probably resulted in the end of his life. Thankfully, there was no lymphoma.
But there was something. Just what, we still don't know. And there are some weird tissue abnormalities in his chest too. So, for a year now Bill has gone in for scans, blood work, etc. every two months as part of a "watch and wait" protocol.
I really don't know what any of this means. I only know that the road we're on is a long one and seemingly endless. Neither of us is stressed about cancer. We are just tired sometimes of this being our story. We are the ones who agreed to go public with our journey. And we have lived out the good, the bad and the ugly before everyone's eyes.
Bill lost a friend through this. Actually, in my opinion, this guy was no friend because friends don't do what he did. He accused Bill of lying about his cancer to get attention. Here's the deal... there are people in this world who like negative attention. There are sympathy seekers. There are liars who pretend to be ill because they thrive on that kind of attention. But Bill Crews is NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE! In fact, he didn't want to tell anyone about what happened in that exam room a year ago. That was me! And I in no way did it for attention. I wanted to tell the world because I wanted my REAL friends to pray for God to heal my husband and I was staying true to our agreement we made a dozen years ago to keep our story public to raise awareness. Awareness means more funding for research. More funding for research means the eventual development of better therapies.
It has never been easy for us to open up our lives like we do. We would prefer to be unknown. Or to be known for something really cool like our super amazing talent in endurance sports (ok, that doesn't really exist, but it would be so fun if that were what we could be known for). Being known as the "cancer family" might seem really cool, but it's a tiresome choice we made. I will be very clear here- we do NOT want anyone's sympathy. Not back then. Not now. Not ever. Do NOT feel sorry for us. We don't. Our story is a positive one.
We know way too many families who don't have the kind of good news we so often receive. They are the reason we keep raising our voices. They are the reason we open our mouths and tell our story and share so many others' stories too. The public needs to know about cancer and how it affects people so that maybe they will donate money to research.
Bill's former friend is lucky I haven't seen him since his ugliness toward my husband. He has no idea what it was like for Bill and me on that gloomy day in that exam room. We were sitting there hoping that oncologist would say, "oh, this is no big deal" and send us home. Instead it felt like a punch to our guts when he said, "You have a really big tumor here and of course it's cancer unless we can prove it's not". Add to that the many "hot spots" he pointed out on the scan which, combined with the very high cancer markers, "PROVED" it was cancer, as soon as he walked out of the room, I started crying. That is not normal for me.
I was tempted to ask God "why us?" that day. We had been considering a big move to a place where we've wanted to live for a long time and we had to turn down that life to remain in Houston with cancer. Since that day, we have endured some of the most troubling of times and there are times I want to turn my eyes up to God and say "why us?"
Then my phone rings and some young mom is crying into my phone saying "mi hija tiene leucemia y no tenemos dinero" (my daughter has leukemia and we don't have money). Or I get an email from the LLS asking me to do a "First Connection" call to a young lady whose husband has stage four lymphoma and she desperately wants to talk to someone who understands. I really don't have time to ask God "why me" because He's so busy showing me why.
I am so grateful to be married to a great man who loves God and his family and who works hard taking care of us. I'm glad that he has handled his illness with faith and confidence. We won't shut up about it. It's our calling. So, if there are any "friends" out there who have a problem with our talking about our journey, they can just stay away.
Today, I don't ask "why me?" because I feel better saying "Thank you God, for choosing me."
