Fortunate one

Sawyer is in Montana this weekend, his every 4-6 week moonlighting gig where he works the whole weekend in the Helena veterans hospital with the admitted patients. He gets two official hours off each day, and typically can sleep in a little windowless room for the majority of the nights, only being called by night nurses if there is something they don't know how to deal with. Usually it's more boring than tiring. He works this job additional to his regular job here to provide us with a nicer lifestyle and a safety cushion during this time where I am simultaneously more expensive and less able to be a breadwinner.

It's hard to craft words of gratitude about the bacon-bringin'-home willingness of ones partner that don't sound a bit crass, but it's just one more thing that makes my march down cancer way just a bit easier.

I am grateful to Sawyer for giving up his weekends for me, and so much more.

Those of you who know him probably intuit he is a low-drama partner. This is a blessing, because I've got enough for two people.

As a partner to a cancer-fighter, he is quietly supportive. As an MD, I could have imagined him being more vocal and opinionated when attending my appointments or in general ("do you really need that glass of wine? ...remember last time it gave you night sweats.") but he is incredibly unobtrusive. Once in a while he will ask a question that is additional or independent of my list of questions, but typically he has been humble and quiet, proffering a second opinion only when solicited.

While his eyebrows occasionally rise for a nanosecond when I announce the latest wacky supplement I am taking or new woo-woo therapy I am trying, he knows that I am the best and only person to know what works for me. And I know that he trusts my instincts, as he's seen me thriving despite my prognosis and treatment.

I gotta give him some mad props for all of this as it cannot be easy for him as a partner, as a man and as a person trained to "know better" about bodies and medicine to maintain such a hands-off attitude.

He doesn't read the blog ("I live it, don't I?") but I am writing this here for posterity:

Thank you, Sawyer, for giving me the freedom to negotiate this terrain in my own way. I feel you always there beside me, but you never have clouded my own sense of direction. This is the best way to help me heal, and I am amazed, delighted and deeply grateful that you get it, instinctively.

You are amazing, and I love you dearly.