Dealing with the Cancer Diagnosis

When people would ask how do I feel or they would ask Dee how does she feel, we really couldn't answer. We were in shock. Dee was 28, we never thought about cancer. Even when we started researching her symptoms and saw cancer as a possibility, I was in denial. Dee knew something was seriously wrong but cancer wasn't foremost in her mind. The first cancer diagnosis was scary but we still thought that it would be cured and everything would be OK. Then we got all the details of the rhabdomyosarcoma. That information combined with the reality of all the blood and platelet transfusions she was getting seemed unreal, like it was the end of her life. She concentrated on one fact, that she would never be able to have a child after the chemotherapy. Almost every time she woke up, she talked about it. We had already decided to not have children, we had nieces and nephews plus we wanted to be free to travel a lot. Nevertheless she deeply felt the loss of choice and it really upset her.
She did spend a lot of time sleeping during her first days, she was in the hospital for a total of 23 days in the beginning. The doctors were worried about her but her body just needed sleep. When she was awake, she was depressed and crying if I wasn't there. I was trying to work but when her nurse pulled me aside to let me know that Dee was having a hard time during the day, I immediately talked to my boss. I knew that Dee didn't want to be on any more drugs than she had to be and if my sitting by her side was all that it took to keep her off of antidepressants, I was more than happy to do it. Although I had only been at my job a month or two, they had no problems letting me go down to 2 hours a day. Plus they let me start at 6 AM so that I could be at the hospital by breakfast time. When Dee was making the decision to go on the chemotherapy, I told her that I would be by her side no matter what decision that she made and I would help her all that I could. So I spent all day at the hospital, starting about 8:30 in the morning until she went to sleep around 10 or 11 at night. They had an internet hookup in the room so I was able to continue with school and continue researching. I think the fact that I was helping her, helped me deal with everything. In return it helped her because she didn't feel alone and didn't have to always deal with strangers by herself.
She contributes her ability to getting better to my being there for her. I think that it also had a lot to deal with the fact that we didn't dwell on the cancer diagnosis and how close to death she was. She was too close for us to do much about it in terms of death preparation so we concentrated on the chemotheraphy. We learned about blood tests so that we could watch what was going on inside her body. We concentrated on taking one day at a time and we were able to get through those very tough days after the diagnosis.