This has been a truly special year, year and a half, for everyone, and our life has been no different.

K and I did indeed get Covid, although we did do our best to avoid it. All it took was one minor slip-up. Luckily we didn’t end up in the hospital, but no lie, I would take a vaccine every 3 months to avoid it; it was that scary and weird. But really, that was the smallest of things that happened this year.

K got colorectal cancer. Thankfully it was only stage two, but it was still frightening non the less, especially as the tumor made a solid circle around his colon. The surgery was scary enough all on its own as I was basically all alone, but after a few days, he came home. Hurray!

Right? Right? It should have been, but he didn’t keep getting better as we hoped. He came home Friday, but by Sunday, we were driving him back into Anchorage to take him back to the hospital, and by Monday morning, he was back in surgery.

On Sunday, he came out of the sewing room (he just could not get comfortable in the regular bed), he looked much worse to me. I checked his temperature to find it was 101.4. Hell. Fuck. No. We called the doctor and went into the hospital. 8 hours in the emergency room, several tests, and a fever that continued to climb later, we find out that even though his colon had tested fine after surgery, he was leaking fecal matter into his insides.

Thanks to Covid, I wasn’t allowed to say after 9 at night, so Kent had to fight to keep his temp under 103 alone all night. I’d figured out before I had to leave that if I wiped him down fairly often with cold water, he would cool down (and his heart would calm), but of course, they aren’t going to stand there and do that all night for him. So luckily, his temp dropped enough that they could take him back into surgery.

Yes. He made it through, but what followed was 3 weeks of damned near everything that could go wrong going wrong and me driving into Anchorage just about every day until my mom insisted on coming up. He ended up with 4 drains, a temp illiostomy, a picc line, which is basically a SERIOUS IV line that basically ends up in a major artery near the heart, had to have nutrition that way, was on antibiotics for nearly 24/7 for weeks on end, anemia, double pneumonia, fluid retention that made his testicles swell to the size of grapefuit, and hell, who knows what else I’ve forgotten.

It was close, and it was terrifying, and it was exhausting. However, he’s home now, the drains are all out, he’s doing better, and the cancer hadn’t spread.

I am unbelievably grateful for R, and I, who got me through all of this. I am so thankful K is home, doing better, and finally back at work.

KK decided not to tell many people until he knew exactly what stage cancer he had and whatnot. Then, once things started going south, I just didn’t have the time or willpower to let everyone know.