I just joined yesterday. I’m not sure how this can help me, but I figure it wouldn’t hurt to try. Here’s my story. In February 2021, my husband was diagnosed with T-cell ALL, a rare form of leukemia in adults. He was 36 years old. We went through rigorous treatment for 5 months, and he came out MRD negative. We then had 2 options: continue with chemo for another 2-3 years or do a bone marrow transplant and take a year to recover. Success rates of both are similar. We decided to go the BMT route since he had 3 matches. He had the BMT in September. There were some complications, but we made it through the month long hospital stay. In the next couple months, recovery was not going as we would like, but we were taking it day by day. At the end of January, he caught COVID. That was the second worst week of my life. At the end of the week, I had admit that I could not care for him, and I had to take him to the hospital. I couldn’t be with him this time because of the Covid diagnosis. He went in to the ICU a week later, and was there for 6 weeks. He passed away on March 26, 2022. What made this a shock though, was the whole time the doctors kept saying that he is young, and his heart is strong so the odds are in his favor. I never once allowed myself to even consider that death was possibly. It simply wasn’t. Actually, the week before he died, we were talking about putting him in a Long term care facility to get him stronger and back home. He even “woke up,” and the first thing he told the nurse was, “Please tell my wife that I love her.” In the middle of that week, the nurse said that I should call his parents to come see him “just in case.” And that was when my world came crumbling down. It was now a possibility/reality. Our children. 5 and 2. Will be without their father. Why is the world so cruel??? Me. The love of my life. The plans we had together. To see the world together. To raise our beautiful children together. My confidant. My best friend. Pulled away from us so suddenly. I am so incredibly fortunate to have a great support network of family and friends. I have friends who are still calling and checking on me to make sure I’m ok. A friend organized a mall train, my mom has made so many frozen meals that I haven’t had to cook at all. I have a therapist who I talk to once a week. I am thankful for all of that. The only thing left is joining a grief support group, which I just have not had the time nor the energy to do. Despite all that wonderful support, I still feel so utterly alone. All of my friends are married and with kids. This is so hard. I’m bouncing around the stages of grief, which I know is normal. I just can’t logic myself out of these emotions. I know this grief journey I can’t skip. But it is so. hard. If you made it this far, thanks for letting me share my story with you.

Posted by Nucomb at 2022-07-07 16:43:43 UTC