I doubt you would remember me, but I don't think I will ever forget your name. We didn't talk much, and you didn't even seem to want to give straight answers to some of my scariest questions, but you helped make decisions that have impacted the rest of my life.
We didn't keep in touch. I think after 1994, Darrell and I just wanted to move on with our lives. If not completely healthy, he was at least cancer-free and getting better every day. For a few more years, there were follow-up appointments with you that slowly became less frequent, but after treatments were over, I seldom went to the follow-up appointments. I do remember the relief of a clean CT scan a year after treatments. But I don't remember many talks with you after Darrell's initial diagnosis and some of his treatment appointments.
You told us to hope for Hodgkin's Lymphoma, and you were so right. For cancer, it was relatively easy to cure. At least it was if you call six months of debilitating chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation, and illnesses that 22/23-year-olds just don't get easy.
Of course, the biggest thing I'd like to thank you for is your part in curing my husband. I wonder if you'd like to know that we are still together? Married nearly 22 years now. I don't know if that is any more or less likely when a young couple goes through what we did. But I wish I could tell you this.
Darrell and I walked into his first chemotherapy appointment thinking the mix of drugs he'd start getting through his port had a 99% chance of sterility. I don't think this bothered him at the time. But, beyond the chance of losing him, it is what probably scared me the most about that day. There aren't many things that I've just always known, but that I wanted to be a mother was one of them. We'd made precautions. We said we'd adopt if we had to. But a part of me still thought I had to mourn the babies I might have had, if he'd just never gotten sick.
But you and the rest of Darrell's oncology team made a decision shortly before that first treatment that I believe also changed the path of our lives. The combination of chemotherapy drugs you chose instead had only a 50% sterility rate.
So, the other thing I wish I could tell you is that we have two beautiful, amazing children. One of them is almost not a child at all anymore. And being their mother, raising them, watching them grow into their own, has been so much more than I even imagined it would be. And you are a part of that. Before Darrell getting sick, we'd planned to wait five years to have our first child just because we were married so young. After, we waited several years to try anyway because of the treatments he'd undergone. We had absolutely no trouble conceiving either child. Our perfect (to me) daughter was born only slightly behind schedule, not all that long after our sixth anniversary. We debated having just one child after all we'd already been through, but I never felt that our family was quite complete until our son arrived five and a half years later.
I'm sure there are still days that will come that will disappoint, as many have before. My children have their own faults just as the rest of us do. But they are also two amazing creatures who make me proud almost daily to be their mother and to have some small part in the adults they will become. You have a part in that, too. If not for you, I might not have them. If not for you, I might not even have my husband.
Maybe someday I will find the opportunity to tell you in person, but until then, thank you.
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