The supporting role no one auditions for...

😘It is time to hear from Louise, my love, my support!

I talk (write!) enough, so this week I have handed the keyboard reins over to my wife, my support and my love to share her honest views on my diagnosis…over to you Lou 🫶

I am sitting in the car, parked in a quiet layby out of town. My hands grip the steering wheel as I ugly-cry, sobbing. My whole body shakes as the pent-up pain flows through me and out into the world. It feels like the crying will never stop, as waves of grief break over me.

I had no idea, until then, that grief isn’t something that only happens when people you love die. Grief can strike when someone you love experiences something identity-changing – and your whole life shifts with it.

A few hours earlier, I had been sitting on the bed next to Mark, holding him as he cried with an anxiety I had never seen in him before. My strong, positive, life-loving husband – suddenly on his knees at the mercy of a cancer diagnosis. I sat quietly, my hand on his knee, as he cried with fear and grief. I waited while his emotions passed through him, holding mine at bay and neatly packing them into a box in my heart.

As you’ll know, reader – if you’ve been following Mark’s Substack for a while – he was diagnosed with stage 3 prostate cancer in spring 2021. The period from January (his first doctor’s appointment and PSA test) to March (diagnosis) was a whirlwind of appointments and fear. Of keeping my own feelings quietly tucked away while I did my best to sit beside him through the rollercoaster that is cancer.

Treatment came in May and I went into overdrive. I read everything I could about prostate cancer, its treatment and recovery. I waited at home while he attended appointments alone (these were Covid times), and spoke to doctors and nurses whenever I could, asking the questions Mark was too much in the thick of it to ask. While Mark was in surgery, I cleaned the house top to bottom. And over the following days as he recovered in hospital, I drove back and forth, bringing supplies, helping with nursing care, doing whatever I could to feel useful.

Only when Mark was beginning to get back to some form of normality did the reality hit me. My husband had cancer, and my life had changed irrevocably.

All cancer diagnoses impact close family and friends – but prostate cancer, I’ve learned, has a particular impact on the partner too. It’s often called the “couple’s cancer” for a reason. You don’t just sit beside your partner as they go through diagnosis and treatment – that treatment can have a long-term impact on intimacy in your relationship too. But that’s not something on your mind in the first months of diagnosis. Far from it.

I’ve always been conscious that I don’t know what it’s like to be Mark – to face his diagnosis, or the quarterly ups and downs of blood tests and the uncertainty they bring. But I do know what it’s like to love someone through that emotional rollercoaster. To stand with someone, next to them, and be steady. To ask the questions, do the research, carry the weight quietly. And then to steal away for moments when you let the emotions out of their box and roll over you – so that you can go back and be strong again.

The hardest thing is that when I’m struggling, it’s Mark I usually go to for support, encouragement and stability – and yet in this one thing that casts a shadow over our lives, I can’t go to Mark. In this one thing, I am the strong one. And so I’ve had to find another outlet for my grief.

That became crystal clear after Mark’s recovery from surgery. I began to struggle with migraines more than ever before. I believe now that they were the physical manifestation of the strain I’d been under – that once Mark was finding his new normal, my body finally had space to feel what it had been holding.

Without doubt, that period in 2021 was the toughest of our lives – and Mark’s diagnosis continues to impact us in some way almost every day.

And yet, it has also changed my life for the better.

Alongside the grief, a new clarity emerged. While the future – our future – remains uncertain (as everyone’s future does, though we may not realise it until cancer wakes us up), we live our life differently now.

Since Mark’s recovery, we’ve made it our mission to do the things we want to do now, not at some undetermined date in the future. We started ticking off our bucket list: a trip to Saint Lucia, a microlight flight for Mark, and walking the Camino de Santiago – all 500 miles – with two of our children.

These experiences have been utterly life-changing. And I do believe we’d still be talking about doing them, not reminiscing, if it hadn’t been for cancer.

We’ll continue to face the uncertainty together, side by side, whatever it brings. I am so proud of my husband – he is, 95% of the time, the most optimistic, joyful, spontaneous person I know.

And for the other 5%, when things overwhelm him, I’ll be sitting by his side, holding his hand.

If you need more support then there are some great charities ready to help:

United Kingdom: https://prostatecanceruk.org

United States: https://www.pcf.org