Getting Your Bearings

Well, I suppose the burning question is..."What the heck has been going on the last year?" And that's a fair question, some of you know the answer, and for the rest of you I guess it's only fair I help you get your bearings since I've invited you on this path with me.

It was a little over a year ago that my wife was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. The prescribed treatment was chemo therapy for 48 weeks due to her particular strain. Let me just say it's been a long year. When you're in the middle of something like this, and I was just a bystander although it took it's toll on the whole family; it's gut-check time. I faced it at about 40 weeks in.

"IT" is that place where you wake up and realize that you're unsure if you can "do what you have to do" another day. I surprised myself with that thought, I felt like a failure. Imagine, I wasn't even taking medicine, yet I seemingly had no hope to offer, and was unsure I could be helpful at all. I wanted to quit, and "I" there wasn't anything for me to quit. I was just tired of the circumstances I found myself in and wanted them to change.

I guess that's a classic definition of losing hope. See, I happen to know that I'm a hope junkie, I live on the stuff, and I believe in my heart of hearts that there is always hope for a better tomorrow (my checkered past is proof positive). But in this particular situation, I had lost mine. I liken it to how prisoners and hostages must feel. Perhaps early on, there is hope that things will soon change, but over the course of time, the day in and day out of being in something that you have no control over begins to wear on you. Your hope slowly fades, and desperation begins to replace it. That's the road I've been walking this past year.

Now I've got to tell you that things have changed. My wife finishes her treatment tomorrow, all the tests along the way have shown that her body is responding positively (though we won't know for sure until December), and the fog of desperation has gone from my view. Hope has returned!

As stated in the title of this blog, it's a shared journey. I'm no one special, not looking for sympathy or help, just telling my story and asking you to share yours. Life can be tough. Are you going through something right now? Do you feel that hope has left the building? Let me tell you that it can return, and most likely will. The key, I've found, is that you have to look for it. God, friends, family, even professional counseling can help you gain a different perspective and I highly recommend all of them.

I hope to hear from some of you. Leave a comment and if you'd liked to subscribe to this blog, just click the link over on the right. Oh yeah, another interesting thing to watch may be the ad link at the bottom of the page. The set up allowed me to choose "relate ad to blog content". Should be funny to see what "they" think goes along with our journey.

Safe travels.