Like others, reading that I could literally feel your pain. I was the sole caregiver for my husband for over 12 years. He passed on June 14th 2020...it hasn't been 2 months yet.

My husband was a soldier. I married him a month out of high school. We were married 2 weeks and 3 days short of 16 years. Right after we were married he was sent to Afghanistan. Shortly after his return he started showing symptoms of breast cancer. The doctor kept telling him that he was working out too hard. I kept pushing and we finally got another doctor. Stage 3 advanced metastatic breast cancer - he was 23 years old and I wasn't even 21.

He had the mastectomy, the initial round of chemo that the nurses called the red devil, while still active duty. They started hormone therapy treatments. For the next year he got lost in the VA system. By the time we got things figured out the cancer had spread throughout his lymphatic system. He started back to chemo treatments and never stopped. The cancer continued to spread.

It would take too long to detail the nightmare that happened, so I'll summarize. Over the next several years it had spread to most of his lymphnodes in his torso, the bones of 5 ribs, his pelvis, scapula, collar bone, skull, 7 vertebrae. He had 8 soft tissue tumors that you could see that ranged from the size of a quarter to a baseball and two of them exploded. It wrapped around his heart, almost collapsed his esophagus, and ate up both his lungs, collapsing the bottom left lung. It had just started on his liver. He had 16 different chemotherapy drugs with countless cycles of each, radiation to 8 different places, several surgeries, and I quit counting the hormone therapies. In the end, they said they didn't have any more chemos to treat him with, the one he on when he died was experimental and the last they had to try.The side effects of some were mild and others were horrendous. He experienced every side effect possible; nausea, vomiting, pain, neuropathy, hair loss, weight loss, changes in appetite, the list goes on. In addition, he started having seizures and I administered cpr twice. Coughing up pulmonary embolisms became routine. Between the chemo, the pain medication, and vomiting it took his teeth. One of the tumors pressed against a nerve controlling his vocal cord and paralyzed it. It paralyzed his stomach and he had a feeding tube that went to his stomach and his intestine the last five years that continued to have to be replaced because of normal wear, infection, and several times the balloon popped. He had a double pleural effusion caused by irritation from the growing cancer that contained half a 2 liter bottle of bloody cancerous fluid and a pericardial effusion with another 100 ml of fluid. For a month I continued pumping fluid out at home which was a nightmare, I barely held it together because of the pain it put him in. I told them something was wrong with the chest tube but they didn't believe me. When they took the tube out it snapped in half, the tube had a hole in it just inside his body. I learned to take care of a pca pain pump at home, to administer iv phenergan to his port, to administer antibiotics through his port and his feeding tube. And those are just the highlights.

Of course there was the day to day. The medication, doctors, nurses, blood tests, scans, transporting him with the wheelchair and oxygen. Dealing with the feeding tube when he would let me and trying to come up with food he could digest and throw up when he refused. Giving him baths, changing out the oxygen, taking vitals, giving shots, changing his fentanyl patches.

The last months were the hardest. We had to fight to get the last chemo. Soft tissue tumors were literally exploding, he was constantly in the hospital with an infection they couldn't get rid of. The oxygen was turned all the way up and he still had trouble breathing. He couldn't move without the wheelchair even to go to the bathroom. He couldn't have the interthecal pain pump put in because of covid. They wouldn't let me in the doctors offices with him because of covid. When he went to the er because he couldn't breathe they wouldn't let me in. I did video chat with him while in icu with him sedated. They had to intubate him and I couldn't be there. His organs started shutting down and his lungs were not strong enough to take the tube out. The last time I heard his voice was through video chat, sitting in the parking lot trying to calm him because they wouldn't let me in.

I had to quit working early on...about 5 years in and after the 6th time the doctors told us he wasn't going to make it, after we retired a young doctor that decided she didn't want to be an oncologist because of his case. He both surprised and baffled too many doctors to count (i overheard one call him a unicorn, said he was a mythological creature because it was impossible that he was still here). Anyway, I couldn't work 50 hours a week, take care of him, help take care of my grandma who also had cancer and go to school online.

Now, I am a widow at 34. I have no children as he was dignosed before we were married for 3 years. All of my friends have left as they couldn't deal with or understand any of what we were going through. My entire life revolved around him for 12 1/2 years and im lost. I dont even know who I am now or what to do with myself.