It. Is. Leukemia.

 And here it is.  July 9.  Just barely - it's just after midnight.  I decided to stay up and face it immediately.  You can't really fight demons - you have to invite them in and offer them tea and crumpets.

So I have my little port pipe and here I am.  July 9.  The day we lost Fiona and Bob got diagnosed.  At the time we thought it was a challenge, not a death sentence.

It's hard not to overthink it.  Sometimes I feel that if I could just think it through, come up with an alternative that works, that somehow I could have a do-over and make it work this time.  But every time I'm like a rat in a maze, and every path leads to a dead end.

When we went to Shands for our first consult, they laid the options out to us, but basically told us that Bob's leukemia was the aggressive type and the best suggested option would be the bone marrow transplant.  Drugs and chemo could suppress it for awhile but not kill it off.  After we had agreed to it, the intern told Bob that she was relieved he had agreed - she was not able to ethically influence him, but now that he had decided she could tell  him that without the transplant he had maybe a year left to live.

With the transplant, it was nine months.  Two of them brutal.

And if I could ask for a do-over.  His preliminary chemo didn't bother him,  The rest was taking pills and drinking a ridiculous amount of water.  We could have kept doing that.

"Doing that" would have entailed going to the clinic about 15 days out of each month.  Being careful around other people (before Covid and everybody had to start doing that).  Not being able to eat salads or buffets out - being careful of food in general.  Me following his special diet, cooking or sterilizing everything.

We could have had that year.  With him gradually getting sicker and weaker, and eventually I would be doing everything that I am now - housework and yardwork and taking care of everything, and taking care of him as well.  He would have hated that.

The rat in the maze just hit another dead end.  There is no scenario where this would have worked out differently.  There is no good way to have lost him.

There are still unexpected triggers.  I was watching a comedy series ("Our Flag Means Death').  The rather swishy Gentleman Pirate, Steve Bonet, is before a firing squad and cries out "I don't want to die!" and I was instantly gutted because I heard Bob cry that.   Later, in another scene, Bonet's wife (who presumed he was dead) was with a group of other widows and they were all talking about how much better their lives were without their husbands and I was yelling "FUCK YOU" at the TV and it's lucky I didn't throw things at it.

Yesterday I took Hamish to the vet and on the way home Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" came on.  It was one of Bob's favorites - it appealed to his poetic melancholic side.  I had forgotten the line "and you won't read that book again, because the ending's just too hard to take" and the tears were rolling down my face.

In 2020 I did everything I could to distract myself from remembering that nine month period from diagnosis to loss.  In 2021 I embraced it and wallowed it in.  That was rough, but cathartic.  This year - well, I can't ignore the demons, but I'm not going to have an orgy with them.  We can have tea and polite conversations, but this year they are not running my life.