By Christopher Cudworth

A Livestrong bracelet joins the jewelry of the author’s wife in repose on a hand mirror.

I finally just took it off. After 8 years of wearing a yellow Livestrong bracelet, it occurred to me while putting on a short-sleeved shirt this spring that the point had been long made. Livestrong had in some small way been a part of my ability to help my wife through 8 years of treatment for ovarian cancer. But that job was complete.

The night she passed away it was left to me to remove the remaining jewelry she was wearing. That included the German silver earrings I’d saved up to buy her a decade ago. She wore them often. She was German by ancestry. But that had little to do with it. The jeweler where I ordered the earrings for her birthday simply said that German silver was a reliable, handsome substance. And my wife Linda liked silver over gold. It complimented her skin tone much better.

I pulled off her recently repaired wedding ring too. The ring had to be fixed after an incident last summer when her hands, already swollen from Doxil chemotherapy treatments that blistered her skin, became too puffy to remove the ring. She tried, but it raised two giant blisters on her finger, one on either side of the ring. So it was off to the emergency room early on a Saturday morning to have the ring removed. The emergency tech was kind and patient, using a tool to snip the gold band in two. She handed it to us in a plastic bag.

A few months later we had the ring fixed, and it looked brand new when it was given back to us. That lifted both our hearts. At the same time my wife ordered a tiny silver cross to wear home. We’d been through a lot with her cancer treatments but had also had many a prayer answered so fully that gratitude overflowed. So she bought the small silver cross to wear every day.

I took that off too, along with a bracelet she liked to wear just to feel feminine on days when cancer treatment side effects made her feel less than human.

Reflections

All these effects and a few more were placed carefully on the hand mirror she used every day. Over the last two years it was used to check the position of the wigs she wore because her hair was never coming back. That is one courageous woman, who lives on without much complaint because her hair is gone. Once in a while she’d tear off the wig at home and sometimes in the presence of guests, and no one ever expressed shock or showed surprise. People agreed she should do whatever she wants.

Through all 8 years of being caregiver to my wife, I wore the Livestrong yellow bracelet as a quiet connection to the greater cancer community that was going through the same sorts of things. Of course ovarian cancer like my wife had is a known killer of women. Statistics on the disease are grim. As the National Alliance on Ovarian Cancer reports, “The Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program reports that on January 1, 2009 in the United States approximately 182,758 women were alive who had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer (including those who had been cured of the disease).”

That all sounds encouraging, to a degree. But wait…

The year my wife was diagnosed in 2005 some 19,842 women were also diagnosed with the disease. 14,787 women died that year from ovarian cancer. That does not mean they were diagnosed and died the same year of course. Although many likely did. Ovarian cancer is a swift killer if given a chance to progress. My wife was diagnosed Stage IIc but she could well have been a III or IV if I had not been an assertive husband who insisted she get over her reticence to find a new gynecologist and get a checkup. Most of her issues at the time were typical middle aged woman stuff. So there was no panic going in. But when you find out your wife has ovarian cancer it is a stunning revelation, no fun at all.

So I also took to wearing an teal-colored bracelet given me by someone along the way, who explained that teal is the official color of ovarian cancer. Colored bracelets were proliferating by then. The Livestrong Effect was far greater than its own organization. A reminder: Lance Armstrong was at the height of his popularity and success in 2005 when cancer entered our lives.  Lance was just finishing up 7 straight Tour de France victories. And while cycling had struggled for years with its doping woes, but many considered Lance a shining departure from all that. Turns out that wasn’t true.

Riding like crazy

It was pretty much by circumstance that my own cycling “career” started up in 2005. My brother-in-law gave me a Trek 400 steel frame road bike he no longer needed. So I rode that thing like crazy a couple years before buying a “real” road bike, my Felt 4C.

A friend of mine who had been a rider years before offered me his road bike before I bought the Felt. It was a little small, so I gave it back. But he told me to keep the other cycling stuff he’d brought over, which included two bright yellow Livestrong bracelets.

A steady companion.

Like many people I was caught up in the allure of the yellow bracelet. So iconic and clean. Millions wore them. I put mine on in early June, as I recall.

Two weeks later my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

More colors

At times I wore both the teal and yellow bracelets until one day an employer asked what the teal bracelet was for. This was years after my wife had been through the exhausting cycles of chemotherapy that almost required me being home with her. And in some ways, that did cost me a job. But while I was unemployed I was also available to care for her. And things happened to help us with money and hope.

In fact, the very day she was declared cancer free after her second big set of treatments, that very day I got a new job. So many serendipitous things like that have happened. So many.

More challenges

It worked the other way as well, however. One employer tried to force me off their insurance. Another fired me the day after I let them know my wife was going back into cancer treatment. So many ways it was a rough road, to be honest. Some of that was my own fault. It’s pretty hard to separate your own mistakes from the shit the world throws at you. That’s one of the tarsnakes of self-perception. Some things you’ll never really know for sure. Like, whose fault was it, really?

Some of the travails resulted from irrational fear or strange circumstances wrought by how our nation handles health insurance. It is absurd that we buy our health insurance through our place of employment. There should be no connection at all. Our whole paradigm is stupid, lopsided and dangerous to society. But some people claim the Public Option is socialism. I say it is humane rather than Darwinistic. And I hate to use that term “Darwinism”, because it definitely should not “mean” what people take it for; the concept of heartless commerce and social strife. But the colloquial meaning is used here to hit those over the head who insist that health insurance programs should be strictly profit-motivated and, by that definition, predatory in some respects.

World class

Click to enlarge image. World Health Organization rankings of top health care systems.

One learns to navigate the health insurance system of one’s own country, and many of Livestrong’s resources are designed to help people find and manage health insurance resources. What a noble cause.

But isn’t it also ironic that it is so necessary to broker our own health in a nation that claims to be the City on the Hill according to its causational principles.

We lie to ourselves. The World Health Organization ranks America’s health care system 38th on the global list of best health care systems. No wonder we pumped so much pride into Lance Armstrong. If France (#1 health system worldwide)  is kicking our ass on important issues like health care, it makes you wonder if they saw Armstrong as an affront on some other level. Many French journalists accused Armstrong of doping all along, through all 7 Tour victories. And they were right. The accusations weren’t yellow journalism after all.

Losing yellow

All this puts into perspective the moment I took off my yellow Livestrong bracelet and placed it on top of the jewelry my wife was wearing when she died from ovarian cancer this past March 26, 2013. Each piece of jewelry, and now the yellow bracelet, is reflected in the clear mirror she had used for years to check her face and hair and clothes before going out.

I’ve ridden more than 20,000 miles since first putting that Livestrong bracelet on. It enjoyed sunny days and driving rain. Late nights at the hospital and gray early dawns when all my wife wanted was something she could eat that didn’t taste like metal or make her turn her nose up.

It’s been quite a journey. But now it’s over, except for the grieving. And that I accept with all my heart while knowing that I must go on. She was one courageous gal who gave us years more life than many could have tolerated.

Her garden is coming into bloom now. Each and every plant is a reflection of her love and care, her green thumb. I’m hoping I can replace my yellow bracelet with a green thumb as well. That would be fitting.

We Run and Ride. So do you. Let’s share original thoughts.