The Fight (Republished)

Chapter 3: Present

When you think about it, tomorrow never comes to be. Tomorrow is something you never actually get to experience, and as the saying goes: Today is a gift, that's why it's called the present.

Tomorrow is the future, but the future is never written until it becomes your present day. In your present day is where you actually live and breathe. The same goes for yesterday; it's nothing you can go back on and redo. It's something that will be a memory in the past; a shadow of the present. What you make of your life is what you do each and every day that you have granted to you. Tomorrow is never guaranteed and yesterday was a today that's been spent.

Reflection is something that many of us go through and I sometimes find myself deep in my mind, picking away at questions and ideas when I'm alone. I'm not bored when I do it, I just wander while in a content state of being in my existence. I don't find it wasteful to look inside one's self to find out what it is that makes sense deep down. Waiting for your car to get fixed at the mechanic is a waste of time; you're stuck there, wishing you could be doing something else.

What I've written so far for you, are just words from my thoughts. They come to me when I least expect them and I try to jot them down so I can pass them along for someone to maybe make sense of one day. I actually started writing in a journal shortly after I got married. I wanted to tell people in story form of what my life was like and how I was dealing with things on a daily basis. Writing in my journal was the easiest part of my day, but my struggles weren't all that great compared to my wife's, who had been battling cancer.

This is my third time writing to you about her and I. We've been through a lot since the last time I sat down to write a Cole's notes version of our lives together. My journal entries have a lot of daily events and details in them, but they're just for us. They are for our children to read as they get older and become curious as to how we came so far against such strong adversity. Maybe one day they'll write a book, or make a movie based on our life, who knows. I'm not gunning for that, but I wouldn't mind people knowing our story and this is why you are reading this right now.

My wife and I are now in our thirties, we have three children, two boys and a girl. We also have another baby girl on the way, due in a few weeks. I know there are a few gaps that need to be explained, so I'll do my best to explain them all, starting from the beginning.

Within our first year of trying to have a baby, we were successful in doing so. We had a baby boy that looks just like my wife. Excited and overjoyed are probably the words most people used to describe how we looked when he finally came into this world. If you ask me, there are no possible words to describe how one feels when they bring another life into this world. The emotions are just too complex to explain.

Our son was born without any obvious health issues and didn't have cancer passed on to him either. We thought we had dodged a huge bullet - which we had - but we weren't out of the woods yet. Near the end of my wife's year long recovery, she became ill again and was forced to stop breastfeeding our son. The doctor's feared the worst that time, but an experimental drug was available, so we tried it before thinking about surgery at all.

Miracles happen every day. Whether it be a child being born, someone cheating death, or just watching nature grow. For me, my wife being completely free of cancer in under two years was a miracle. We knew very little about cannabis oil and other combined treatments at the time, but they sure proved themselves effective. I'm not saying that it will work to cure everyone's cancer, or other health problems for that matter, but it did work for her.

She still goes for yearly checkups to see if the cancer has been trying to make a comeback, but there have been no signs of it for ten years now. All of our children are three years apart and a lot of people ask us if we did it on purpose. I wish I could say that we had actually, but we honestly didn't. Things just happened to work out that way for us and we couldn't be happier. The timing actually worked perfectly for my wife who was able to go to college after our second son was born. She graduated, found her dream job and then got pregnant again shortly after with our first daughter.

I know it sounds surreal and it sometimes feels like it, but things have turned right around for us since the first time I saw her in a hospital bed. Sure, we had the scare shortly after our first son was born, but since then, we never could have imagined our lives as they are today. Most people have sad stories to tell and ours definitely started off that way. I guess you could say that my wife has a guardian angel watching over her and I would love to thank them for doing such a great job.

Treatments for cancer have improved even more over the past five years since my wife had hers. She was one of the first to try it, and since then the rate of cancer related deaths has declined by more than twenty percent. Astonishing, I know. I just wish that we had it sooner for my friends and family who suffered and lost their battles. The world is ever changing and I truly believe that as we progress in learning new ways to fight illnesses, we can all have a better quality of life.

For what it's worth, my wife's battle with cancer transformed her over the years. She went from someone who was completely lost, to someone who is now so strong and confident in what she can do that she is an inspiration to everyone she meets. She has everything she ever dreamed of having and so do I. Looking back on how far we've both come, I never imagined sitting here with my kids running around the house and her napping in the next room with pregnant belly number four.

My first book was a success by the way and hers was as well. My agent agreed to take her on when they signed me and both our books became best-sellers. Her book was about her health struggles from when she was younger, right up until she was free of cancer. It wasn't supposed to be as long as it got, but where her first draft initially ended, a new chapter was added and then another and another. Her book nearly doubled by the time it got published. What was originally a story of a dying young woman, turned into a story of strength and recovery. It was tough to read in the beginning, but once you got to the halfway point, everything turned around and it ended on a positive note. I'm sure there were people out there who read it and had an expectation of how the story would end - it was nice knowing their expectations would be proven wrong.

My wife was strong, maybe stronger than anyone I had ever known. Ten years ago I held her hand in that hospital bed as we cuddled and she fell asleep. I was her rock, her strength and what she needed then to see her through the pain. Giving her my strength allowed her to draw on it and become stronger herself. Giving her my attention and love allowed her to now give it back to our children. Giving her my time when I thought her's was going to expire, rebooted her clock.

To give without expectation of getting something in return is so beautiful and selfless. In her time of need I was there, even when she didn't want me around. There were times when she just slept and I would sit there in the chair, reading, or writing a new book on my laptop. There were times when she looked so sick that I would cry myself to sleep at night while my son slept in his crib. Sometimes family members, or the odd nurse would ask me how I did it all on my own as she laid there on the verge of death. Faith and hope, I would tell them. Hope that she would pull through because she felt my presence in the room for those two hours, or sometimes double.

We all have our struggles, some yearly and some daily. Cancer patients struggle every second as they lay in a hospital bed, wishing and hoping that it was going to end, or get better soon. I guess what doesn't kill you can make you stronger, but the person, or people who support you through your battles can also give you strength. And one day, maybe that strength will be returned in the form of patience, as you deal with noisy munchkins running around the house, while your pregnant wife tries to sleep.