Through My Eyes Part 1- Amanda Dudte

Noticing the change. 

The change of how your husband can’t throw the ball, your husband can’t  play football, your husband can’t cheer, your husband can’t do any of his favorite things with the kids anymore. The change of no energy, the change of no jokes, the change of no Beau. 

Beau is like any other man who doesn’t need to see a doctor, he is fine. Well after a month or two, he knew. He knew he needed a doctor, way more than he would like to admit. He was not Beau. 

The call from the doctor we never saw coming… He stated your white blood cell count is extra high, alarming high. What the hell does that mean?? 

You might have leukemia? WTF!!! 

There is no way! He was healthy, doing manual labor all day, yelling at coworkers, playing ninja at work! This is not real, they are wrong. 

We go see a specialist, she starts asking questions…. Do you have a pain in your side.. yes, do you feel winded… yes, do you feel weak… yes! Every answer is yes! Does a check of his skin, you have tiny red bumps on your legs, you have every sign of leukemia. Once again, no way in Hell does he have leukemia, you are wrong. Tears are flowing now, oh my god, you might have leukemia. She walks back in the room a few minutes later with the blood results… you have leukemia!!! 

There is no feeling in the world like hearing those words! 😭😭😭😭

She continues, you need to be admitted, like right now! Your whole body is leukemia cells!!! So first off we learn he has leukemia, now you are telling us it has taken over the whole bloodstream?? How is this even possible??? 

We have kids at school, how are we supposed to do this! No time to process, no time for anything! So Beau being Beau,  Beau says no! I have to see my kids, I have to pick up my car from work, I have to do my manly work around the house. 

This is the beginning……

He gets admitted into Akron general hospital, they do unlimited amounts of tests on him, they decide it’s too much for them to handle, he needs Cleveland Clinic. 

To watch him being transported to Cleveland in the back of an ambulance is another, this is not real moment. How??? when just a little while ago he was home, working, making dinner, playing with the kids. How is this possible? 

He met a doctor named Dr. Sobecks. He loves to explain things like they are a garden. I will forever remember his garden terms. He tried to make you understand, but in this situation, you can’t! You can’t even wrap your head around the fact that the word cancer is now part of your life. 

So this is just the beginning, we are thinking a couple rounds of chemo, feeling like crap for a few weeks and you will be fine! WRONG!!!! 

Any kind of side effects possible, Beau got! 

Nausea, Yes, vomiting Yes. Hair gone, Yes, but those are just the beginning. 

He fought through very rough rounds of intense chemo, then it’s time for transplant. You are thinking YES!!!! This is it! The transplant will knock this out and it’s all going to be great again! WRONG! 

With the transplant came, unbearable pain in the bones, colitis, GVHD. 

GVHD, which is Graft Versus Host Disease. His body was fighting the transplant! The one thing we were hoping was going to stop this terrible disease! So not only was beau so skinny he couldn’t wear anything he owned, hell he couldn’t wear anything I owned! Not that he tried 🤣 his body was a mess!!! His feet and legs were so swollen he couldn’t walk. I wrapped his feet every day and pushed his wheelchair. At this point he was beyond broken. He couldn’t do anything! No playing football with kids, no funny cheers with his daughter, no dinner, no nothing.  To go from the breadwinner of the family, the fun dad, the cook, the man everyone looked forward to seeing, to nothing. This is where the deep depression arose. This was not my husband, not the man I fell in love with, he was gone. 

So now it’s my time to explain the side of the care giver. First off, this is my husband! 

this is the love of my life since 16. He is my everything!  So I will do anything and everything to make sure he will survive. 

You never realize how much a significant other does, until they can’t. So here is a working mother of three trying to make life as normal as possible for her children 

Our lives have have been turned upside down, but as a mother, you do whatever you have to, to make their lives easier. 

I now have to find a way to get our children to school, which may sound easy, but not when you open enroll and there are no school buses that come to your house and you have to be at work before they go to school??!!! You have to figure out how to get them from school? You have to check homework, fix homework, make dinner, find a way to get to sports on time, make sure they shower, make sure they know during this crazy situation that their father is in the hospital for weeks at a time, that he will be okay and they are loved! 

This is where I lost myself!  I love my family more than anything in this world, but you get home from working all day with children, then come home to three children talking to you all at the same time about everything, you lose your sanity! You lose the loving nature about yourself, you lose the patience you once had, you lose anything good about yourself you had before. Three children need separate help and it’s near impossible to do that in the few hours you have after work. My kids ate whatever cheap and quick meals I could make, my kids got the bare minimum help I could give on homework, my kids got no special time, no loving mother, no pleasant home life. There were so many days of feeling like a failure! You fail your kids when they are being bounced around between different family members getting them from school and staying till they go to sleep m, so I can go he Beau after work. You fail your husband when you can’t go visit him everyday and he is sitting in that hospital room by himself all day and night! This was the breaking point for me! I can only do so much! 

Don’t get me wrong I had a great support system, friends and family. But when you are dealing with this, there is only so much someone else can do. As soon as my kids are in bed, I escape into the garage. A place I could cry, scream, yell, break things. This was my escape. I would call my friends and family at very late hours just so I didn’t feel alone.  That was always the worst word for me. ALONE. 

There was no more nights of talking and laughing with my husband by the fire, it was just me.

ALONE

This is the side of the caregiver no one talks about. You are always alone, don’t get me wrong, you are caring for your significant other, but you are alone, This is where it starts. Sporting events, alone, childrens school shows, alone, the fair, alone, trick or treating, alone. Whether Beau was home or in the hospital, it was always me alone. That is hard to handle when you have been together since 16.

Walking on eggshells 

When Beau did finally get to come home, everyone was so excited! But it was a life changer. He needed to lay down most of the day, he needed quiet, he needed naps. These things are near impossible when you have three young kids! Then comes the aggravation! The aggravation from not feeling well, not being able to eat, being in constant pain. So here lays a man who used to play and joke with the kids to everyone walking on eggshells. The kids would be scared to walk by him, they thought they would get yelled at. The house got very tense. You would never know how he was feeling that day, will it be a good day or will it be a day of pain and yelling?  As a caregiver, this wears you down. You feel useless, you feel empty, you feel defeated. There wer mornings I would walk into work and someone would ask how I’m doing. That’s  all it took… I would break down crying 😭 and if I felt this way, how do my children feel? I try to keep them sheltered from it, but there is only so much you can do. 

This is one of the worst parts of cancer! 

This was the song that’s still hard for both of us to listen to. Sorry honey, now they all know you like Taylor Swift. 😄 I hope the link works we’re kinda new to all of this. 

 https://music.apple.com/us/album/soon-youll-get-better-feat-the-chicks/1468058165?i=1468058699