The Whole {Cancer} Story

Buckle up. I'm about to share the whole enchilada. It's as devastating as it is triumphant, as ordinary as it is remarkable, as transformative as it is anguishing. Here goes our cancer story from my (Brandi's) perspective. Graham has his own story to share that is likely to sound quite differently than mine.

First of all, the most frequent question people ask Graham is, "How did you know that something was 'off' about your testicles?" I think people want to know what to look for. Graham had a swollen testicle. It was minor at first and directly coincided with wetsuit season here in Florida. Just one year prior, he had the same swelling issue during wetsuit season and it was Epididymitis, a minor infection that is treated with antibiotics. So this made perfect sense and we figured it was a quick fix. But the swelling became more of a lump over the course of 30-ish days. It was 60 days from the beginning of minor discomfort to a golf ball sized mass. Testicular cancer grows FAST!

Odd photo to start with, but its irony is a fun piece of the beginning of the beginning. The gal in the Cubs shirt is a new friend we've come to call "Lisa, the Vegan." We met up with these friends for a couple of beers the day after Graham had his scrotal ultrasound. Both couples we were with are in the medical field, so we all laughed about the awkwardness of having one's balls imaged by a young woman. Keep in mind, the ultrasound was not concerning at this point...we thought the swelling was Epiditymitis, so laughing was still appropriate. That night, Lisa told us all about veganism. Despite my interest in her creative recipes, our response was, "Thank you, but we're not interested. Not us, we would never consider it, have a nice day." Three days later, our world/perspective/eating habits were forever changed. Lisa the Vegan, Patrick, Tara, Paula I don't believe our meeting up with you guys that day was a coincidence, you became a part of our story😘

This photo was taken on Graham's birthday, January 6. 

16 days later, on January 22, Graham went to the Urologist for ultrasound results. I was out to lunch with mom (another non-coincidence) when he called me. I was expecting news of antibiotics, etc. for Epididymitis. Instead, he says, "Doc says there's an 85% chance I have cancer, I'm having surgery in two days." I was unable to speak or think straight, a true punch in the gut. With tears streaming, I asked few questions to which he had no answers. He says he needs a quick physical for his upcoming surgery, so I say, "ok, I'll go straight home" (weird response, I know...why would I go home and not go to him?) Luckily mom was there to think clearly for me and says, "Go straight to Graham and go to the physical with him, I'll pick up the kids!" Thanks, mom!

The uncertainty and fear we both felt can only be described as otherworldly. We had no words or emotions for each other that day. Just pure shock, unable to feel anything. We couldn't even say the C word out loud until day three. Neither Graham nor I emote easily, but on day two, we both broke. We shared the burden and our fears. I mean, geez we'd been married for 15 years and make a pretty decent team for fighting off unpleasant circumstances, but we were at a loss on how to fight this.

 We didn't tell the kids about cancer, just that dad has to get his testicle removed. We wanted to protect thier innocence, but give the circumstance some weight because we certainly were not our usual selves. 

Time to FIGHT! Surgery was a little scary for Graham as he's never experienced any type of hospital procedure. After the administration of some fun pharmaceuticals, he began describing the movement of the wallpaper😂 I had to leave the room at this point, but the removal of what Graham calls "Righty Ford" went as planned. 

This is a pic of a pic of the actual testicle with the golf ball sized tumor. Yes, Graham asked if he could take it home in a jar, but much to his dismay, it had to be sent off to the lab for testing. 

At this point, we had to focus on Graham's recovery from surgery, but it was so frustrating to have zero answers about the cancer. We were referred to an oncologist for the following week, but we still didn't know what type of tumor he had or anything about the course of action that would be taken. 

Uncertainty is the one definite event of cancer. 

Graham's brother, Ricky, contacted me right when he heard the cancer news and booked a surprise flight down here for surgery recovery. It was a true surprise for Graham, although he was a little bummed about the circumstance of the visit as he was bed ridden. But the support meant more than either of us can articulate. 

Our neighbor, Snuffy, picked Ricky up from the airport since I was still at the hospital. This day (and the whole cancer experience, really) was a true "it takes a village" affair; human nature has this wonderful design where people step in when the suffering don't even have the energy or forethought to tell you what they need. My mom had arranged for a few of our friends to bring us meals during recovery, so we were well loved and taken care of that weekend!

Hey Ricky, remember that time I healed your common cold with a wheatgrass shot?!

Graham's procedure was akin to hernia surgery so he couldn't get around for a bit. Or was it an excuse to ride the rascal at Walmart?  

My dear friend, Jennifer, put together a list of practical ways people could help us. We were so overwhelmingly worried about finances, but were extremely reluctant to share that with anyone. Graham is self employed and the primary earner of the family and who knows how much medical bills are going to be?! 

In the end, we were grateful beyond imagination for the food and donations, a true saver of our sanity. This photo is our Sam's Club pickup of household items and food from Jennifer and family. What a blessing.

Our first food/household items delivery from Aunt Karla and Cousin Kelly and family. While we were feeling defeated and anxious, love was vibrating through so many channels that we could not help but feel surrounded by its warmth.

Funny shirt sent by an old friend. We quickly corrected balls to ball😂

During recovery, we found ourselves with some downtime together. I think we needed that time to take it all in, another one of those blessings in disguise. This is us all bundled up after we took the kids to school one day. Must've been a cold Florida day. 

With all the weird changes in our lives, we tried to do some normal things. This is their first father/daughter dance. Graham's fathering is second to none and he was honored to accompany our precious girls. 

Mason Classical Academy 5k. 

Graham, unfortunately, couldn't run it, but the kids had fun running with their friends.  

Meanwhile, we met with Graham's oncologist, Dr. Abi Aad, who was suspiciously optimistic. He did not have results from pathology with details about the tumor, but he wanted to see a PET scan before deciding the course of action. More waiting. The results from the PET scan showed one of his lymph nodes slightly lit up...the lit up areas show cancerous cells that are likely to or already have formed tumors. The results were not definitive that the cancer had spread, but he couldn't be 100% sure. Doc decided on two rounds of chemotherapy for Graham. Each round is five days of intravenous drugs/steroids/fluids for about five hours per day. If the two rounds didn't rid his lymph nodes of the cancerous cells, he will have to have surgery to remove the lymph nodes. It's an invasive surgery that we did not want!

This photo is Graham's first day of chemotherapy. Day one is long, but relatively easy without many unpleasant side effects. Each day is progressively worse with days 3-10 being almost unbearable. 

We have this buddy, Aavron, who periodically threw a little money in my Venmo with a caption of "post chemo treats," or "happy hour on me." I kept telling him to stop it, but he didn't. These little treats were a small, but magnificent gesture that gave us the most beautiful gift of little pick-me-ups we never knew we needed. 

Our extremely talented friend, Stephen, has this gorgeous gallery of landscape photography. He does not sell it. He just shoots it and shares on Instagram. But people want to buy it. So he opened his gallery for a one time purchase event with all proceeds going to our family. Talk about a giving spirit. Not to mention, he and his wife had TWIN babies the week of the sale and he was still giving his time to manage a sale for his buddy. That's love. 

Graham wanted to get ahead of the imminent hair loss. Plus, in his words, he didn't want to be that guy showing up to the chemo room with long locks looking like an asshole. The kids were the obvious choice for stylists. They had all kinds of ideas. 

First, the girls gave him bangs. 

Then a bowl cut.

Then a skullett.

The aftermath was a shorn head. 

Graham decided not to get a port installed, but opted to receive meds through an IV that stayed in for a few days at a time. Despite heavy anti-nausea medication, he was constantly nauseas. The steroids prevent any sleep from occurring (for at least two months.) Also, his system was so busy processing all the toxins of chemo, that he was peeing every hour, even through the night. He would weigh himself before and after his five hour chemo sesh; he would gain five pounds of fluid each day...ugh! His sense of smell was especially keen. We had to cease all use of diffusers in the house as he could not deal with any smells. Sheets had to be washed every two days, he said EVERYTHING smelled like chemo to him. No food sounded good to him, but he had to eat often to stave away the nausea. Luckily, he was able to eat a little of whatever I put in front of him. I had to get creative with snacks to send in his "chemo" bag each day. 

The overall recount of this time is absolute misery. I felt horribly that I could do nothing to help. I am a people pleaser, so this gives me all sorts of anxiety. Meanwhile, he's feeling hopeless and irritable, wondering when this hell is going to end. He just wanted to get some sleep and be a part of the family. He was withdrawn and absent for which I did not assign blame. He was putting every ounce of energy into the mental game of keeping it together. His misery tugged at my heart every moment of the day. 

I won't go into the details of our food overhaul (ya'll know I could talk about this for hours!) But apparently I took photos of our food and I feel the diet is worthy of a place in the story. On day two of this saga, Graham says, "I think we need to switch to a plant based diet." I'm especially thrilled at the challenge, so I say, "I'm down!" We did a lot of research and I was gifted the direction of a special friend, who is also a nutritionist, as to where to start this gigantic task. Crystal, your hour long phone conversation outside of the hospital that day is something I think about almost daily. Thank you, dear. We're moderately obsessed with veggie subs.

We truly love being vegan. Sure, we miss certain things and enjoy the occasional meat cheat when we're at a restaurant. But overall, our goal (I've had to preach it to the kids) is to focus on all the delicious food we CAN eat, not on the things we're missing. It's been a HUGE effort to come up with all new recipes, but we've got our staples dialed in and I have to say that our food is tastier and more diverse than EVER!  

If you're wondering how the kids handled giving up meat and dairy, they struggled with it, but rallied! This is a little trick Graham and I came up with. He made a menu of super tasty/healthy snack ideas and made funny names for them. This is laminated and hanging on the fridge. We figured if they could see the ideas, they're more likely to make healthier choices. Just grab yourself a nacho-tada, some apple-cinna-slices, or a very berry bowl...voila! 

And the losing of the hair has begun. This proved to be much more disheartening than anticipated. I guess it was just a daily reminder that cancer is a part of our lives. 

We had a sweet Ecuador trip planned (and already paid for😑) during Spring Break with Booma and Boompa, but had to cancel the whole thing because of cancer. 

Dad, Debe, Chelcy, and Milo ended up coming here instead. We stayed at a hotel in Marco Island for the girls' birthday. Here they are showing off their new sandals sent from Grandma and Grandpa. Can't believe our twin girls are nine!

I had planned a private morning yoga session on the beach to begin their birthday celebration. The whole family (plus Aunt Chelcy) got to join!

                                              

A little birthday celebration in the condo, complete with dairy free s'mores cupcakes. 

Little Milo is sure to bring a smile to anyone in the midst of dark times. 

St Paddy's Day on Stuart Beach for Alastair's skim competition. 

Just a quick note about Booma and Boompa: they sent us meals three times/week during both chemo weeks. At first, I was like, "I'm not the one with cancer, I can make meals. Don't worry about us, we've got this." But this is another one of those sweet blessings that we never knew we needed. Turns out, dealing with cancer in general, taking Graham to chemo daily, taking the kids to and from school, and working six days a week is exhausting! When those meals showed up at my door, I could just cry. Thank you for taking this burden off of us, Dad and Debe!

We had bought tickets to see a couple of our favorite bands (Jonny Fritz and J Roddy Walston and the Business) before cancer and we REFUSED to miss it. This was the first indoor ticketed concert for the kids. They loved it, but I may have gotten a little over zealous with standing in the front row...it was really loud (they all had earplugs.)

Graham and I paddled out to Big Hickory Island one day. In efforts to feel normal, he tried some skimming. He couldn't believe how utterly tired it made him. Although his immunity and energy levels were high enough to begin his second round of chemo, they are far lower than usual, leaving him feeling super weak. This made his mental game a little rough. 

Graham's mom and brother, Gerrit, showed up for a surprise visit. As much as his mom called him daily, she just needed to see his face and hug his neck. They got in at 1am and came to Graham's bedside to reveal the surprise!

We had a nice, much needed visit with Grandma and Uncle Gerrit! Thank you guys for showing up and giving us some in-person love💙

Surprise visitors two weekends in a row! This time, the surprise was for me. My girlfriend, Jennifer called me from the airport at 4pm on a Friday and says she'll be here in three hours!

I was a little bummed that Jennifer was coming on a Saturday where I had three back to back group padddleboard sessions booked. Little did I know, my mom had secretly reserved two spots in one of those groups, so Jennifer and mom got to come paddling with me on my long work day. 

Riding out a quick, coastal storm. Graham got super pale during his treatment.

A walk to Clam Pass on Jennifer's last day. Feeling so refreshed to get some time with one of my longest lasting friends...something like 23 years?! I'm so grateful you came out here, lady!

Francis and I walking on our beach. No evil life circumstance keeps us from the water. 

It's funny how restoration doesn't come in one big wave at the end like one might think, but in retrospect, we had countless small restorative experiences throughout this bumpy road. 

I haven't even mentioned the people who sent donations and care packages. The donations truly carried us; we don't really know how to properly express our gratitude, but it's embedded deeply. Thank you. The care packages each came from old friends who know us well despite our lack of time together in recent years. Each item was a true token of love and made us smile more than any amount of money ever could have. We should all practice the art of sending care packages to old friends; what a beautiful way to share love💜

Although the girls had a spectacular birthday, they REALLY wanted to have a friend party. I didn't have much energy to plan one, so naturally, I decided it'd be best to have 10 little girls over for tie-dying and a sleepover. Although, I found myself wondering what I had gotten myself into, it went swimmingly! Cutest little group of nine year old sweeties!

This is our celebration day! The day we went to the oncologist to find out if Graham would be facing more surgeries and chemo or if he was cancer free. We were unimaginably nervous as this could go either way. Can we get back to our lives or not? 

And the answer was a resounding YES! Remember how I described Dr. Abi Aad as suspiciously optimistic? Well, I guess his optimism was actually backed by science and the odds for testicular cancer are pretty darn good. But that did not keep us from reading about the what ifs and possibilities of the cancer metastasizing (testicular cancer spreads to lymph nodes, lungs, and brain...yikes!) We didn't want to get our hopes up. 

On this day, we decided to take a big deep breath and celebrate with some cold pressed juice at Food and Thought, a cute natural food market in Naples. 

The end of cancer is weird. I picked out a celebration song that says: 

"Leave my past behind me, my future right ahead

If I ain't livin' for today, I'm better off dead...I'm searchin' just like you." 

So that is a fun song to dance to on celebration day (you should go listen to it, it's called "Searchin For The Truth" by The Haunted Windchimes.) Anyway, its lyrics rang especially true for us. We began working our way out of the traumatic web of the past months. We found ourselves reevaluating our lives with a new sense of making every moment count. I can't tell you how that translates for us, really. But we'll continue Searchin' For The Truth.

Graham's hair starting coming back (beginning of May) in the form of a dark mustache and soul patch. We both thought it was funny, especially since he didn't have a hair line yet. His hair didn't really come in until July and it's super thick! He got his immunity and strength back sometime in June. All in all, he was out of work for 4.5 months. He was ready to get back into his routine! 

I must say, though, that when he wasn't out of commission on chemo weeks, he became the ultimate stay at home dad! By some act of the divine, my business picked up like five-fold right after we received the cancer news. Yes, my priority was to be present for my family, but to have the honor to work and support my family financially was a true gift during these months. Graham would have grocery shopping complete, laundry done, and dinner made for us when I got home. I don't know what I did to deserve a guy who cares so deeply, even during the lowest of the low times. 

Our family mantra is "Lovers are Fighters. We sometimes fight with each other, but we ALWAYS fight FOR each other." And that's just what we did. 

The good times must prevail! Cinco De Mayo piñata. 

We took a quick road trip up to Panama City Beach for Alastair's skim competition. Didn't love PCB, but always love watching our boy doing his thing! We stayed in this camping cabin, so that made it extra fun. 

Alastair ended up cutting his long locks! He's the cutest 11 year old there ever was.

Always grateful for friends who make us get out of the house. 

Last day of school beach party!


I want to say one last bit about cancer. We are so incredibly fortunate to have only had this awful disease a part of our lives for half a year. Albeit rough for any amount of time, I want to take a second to honor the people who are still fighting. Many people have years and round after round of chemotherapy and radiation. My heart is with these folks. Team Rockley is rooting for and fighting with you, my friends.