I am a two-time cancer survivor. Cancer of the body.

In 2014 I was diagnosed with melanoma–present on my back and on my heel. This was between d-days. My first D-day happened in June of 2013 when my UH gathered our adult children to admit to spending ALL of his retirement savings over the five year period I asked him to take the reins of our finances as I adjusted to my new life in Southern California as an empty nester and now, former, teacher. Obviously a huge mistake on my part. He’d never demonstrated anything but agreement with our frugal responsible lifestyle. But then I had no idea he was a validation addict that would, in turn, spend into huge debt through secret credit cards and bank accounts–all in homage of his image as the generous good guy. So no, he was not spending on a human mistress, but he was spending on mistress ego.

Shortly after his financial revelation he became suicidal…pyschotic…ending up in the hospital. He blamed me for that too. He hated the mental ward and blamed me for taking him to the doctors that landed him there. He was in full blown separation from reality psychosis. I knew the symptoms because my adult son has the same when he suffers a bout caused by inconsistent or improper use of his epilepsy control medications. I was left holding the bag–visiting him in hospital and trying to figure out the wreckage he’d made of our finances. It has taken years and having to mortgage our retirement condo to get out of that high-interest credit card debt. A mortgage we were never meant to have as we’d paid off the condo, or so I was led to believe. Master manipulator at the helm.

So I faced life threatening cancer for two months as I waited my surgery date. Melanoma, the most potentially deadly skin cancer for its nasty habit of mestastising, had taken the life of the best man at our wedding at the age of 27. I was so gob smackied and overwhelmed with salvaging what was left of our financial life, I barely had time to grieve my possible imminent mortality. I pleaded for my UH to dig deep, to find a therapist that would help him decipher what was it in his make up that allowed him to destroy our finances in secret.

He did not dig. He eventually got a virtual therapist through the military–an on screen/online guy who was nice, but clueless as to my UH’s real issues. This guy treated PTSD military, not sex addict, alcoholics. To be fair, my UH never really exposed his sex addction. I don’t think he had realized he had one. He did focus on his frustration with me and my low libido. That is what this therapist and my UH discussed. Not the fact my UH had spent us into a quarter million dollars of debt, in secret.

So that cancer of the soul was not addressed. My melanoma cancer was, and was caught before it spread. I have the nine inch scar on my back and the golf-ball sized skin graft on my heel to show for it.

Body cancer number two came in 2016–yes, right after UH dropped the sexual infidelity bomb. I was in such a fog of shock and grief I really didn’t care if my thyroid cancer took me. Turns out this cancer was an extremely slow growing one that had very little chance of spreading. And so I had the half of my thyroid effected removed, with no ill effect. Neither cancer had required radiation/chemo. So I am a double cancer survivor with no history of the fears of chemo, no nausea, no loss of hair. “Only” the inherent fear of any cancer– that it might recur.

Funny how little I cared. How small a space my body cancers occupied in my brain disc space. That space had been flooded with…flooding. The flooding of financial and intimate betrayal trauma.

I’ve beat the big (bodily) “C”.

Damn if I can beat my husband’s cancer of the soul–addictions. I didn’t cause them and I can’t cure them. Only he can do the work to dig deep and figure out what made him tick–what he told himself that gave him permission to spend our retirement savings and go into debt, what gave him permission to keep a mistress for 27 years, what gave him permission to chase a new woman in 2016, emotionally, with hopes of it turning physical, what gave him permission to risk all he claimed to value, what gave him permission to take up pot smoking in spite of it disabling him to land a job. What brokenness, what shame-based identity needs re-parenting.

“Stay on your side of the street, Christine, Alanon admonishes. Detachment. The only sane thing to do. Put on your oxygen mask before helping others. So wise. So true. So hard when you have spent your life supporting a man emotionally, physically.

I am a two time bodily cancer survivor. Piece of cake compared to trying to survive my UH’s spiritual cancer. The jury is still out on that one.

I will survive. Will I thrive? Will I find my new life’s passion. Baby steps and willingness.

One Day At A Time.