"... in sickness and in health ..."

Dave and I recently celebrated our 30^th wedding anniversary.  Yes, really – 30 years!  This milestone has given cause to reflect on the vows we made so many years ago, and the promise “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part”.  Well, the time has come to put those vows into high-octane overdrive practice.

Envious that I was getting all the limelight with my own health crisis over the past 2.5 years, Dave has decided to jump on the chronically ill bandwagon with his own issue: interstitial lung disease (ILD).  Gitty up!

All joking aside, this really, really sucks!  We literally just got our lives back on track and now the carpet has been pulled out from under our feet again.  Unlike breast cancer (which can be beaten down and forced into remission, never to return if you are lucky), interstitial lung disease is a chronic condition that has no cure.  The best that we can hope for is a treatment plan that will halt, or significantly reduce, the progression of the disease. In other words, Dave will never be better than what he is today. He has moderate to severe scarring in his lungs, which is irreversible.  He has trouble breathing any time he moves, he is constantly fatigued, and his body is not getting enough oxygen or expelling enough CO2.  Dave has gone through several tests and imaging, which has ruled out several things, and now we are waiting for a referral to a thoracic surgeon for a lung biopsy.  This will definitively provide some information on what type of ILD Dave has (like cancer, ILD is a catch-all for any one of 200+ diseases).  Until the biopsy is done, his medical team won’t know what direction they need to go in terms of a treatment plan.  So, we are playing the excruciating waiting game. In the meantime, Dave has started on supplemental oxygen and he will likely have to carry around his new girlfriend, not-so-affectionately name Flo, for the rest of his life.

To be brutally honest, the long-term prognosis of ILD isn’t great.  It does have a best-before date of 1 to10 years, dependent on a number of variables of course.  And a lung transplant is the only way to officially kick ILD permanently out of your body.    

It is very hard to find the positive in this situation. The best we can do is take it one day at a time.  Dave and I are very different people and I can’t expect him to face his illness with the attitude and grit that I did.  I can only hope to inspire him to see things through a different lens and to take joy in the small things that happen around us everyday. And I will be there for him like he was for me.