Marking major milestones in new ways this May

By John Bach

Typically, May is a month for celebrations around our house, with Mother’s Day, our anniversary and the end of the school year. But somehow cancer — and some massive efforts to keep it from coming back — has stepped all over our plans this month. 

Take Mother’s Day, for example. The girls and I celebrated their Mom on May 8, but Julie was just three days removed from a full hysterectomy. She is considered cancer free after her chemo treatments  and full mastectomy, but she’s still positive for the BRCA gene, so doctors strongly suggested removing her uterus, cervix and remaining ovary. It was never a question. 

Thankfully the surgery went well and everything came back clear of any signs of cancer, but no sense giving cancer an opportunity to make another unwanted appearance, this time in what Julie terms her “lady bits.” The irony wasn’t lost on us that she spent Mother’s Day recovering from the removal of our girls’ first home. That uterus served our family well. Or, as Julie said, “it produced three of the best humans we know.” 

Greta, Georgia and Josie have been amazingly strong and supportive of their mama throughout this whole ordeal. And while we kept things low-key on Mother’s Day, it was awesome to get to raise a glass of mimosa and brunch together on our back porch. This year, it was enough to just be together and in relatively good health.

We celebrated with champaign during our limo ride to the reception on May 18, 1996. Same day, 26 years later, we shared a romantic avocado toast date at Findlay Market between Julie’s doctor appointments.

We kept the awkward celebrations going this week when Julie and I spent May 18,  our 26th wedding anniversary, running to three different doctor appointments. There’s nothing quite as romantic as watching your bride get a needle shoved into her chest to fill a tissue expander with 100 more CCs of saline. Something tells me Julie might agree. The follow-up with her OB/GYN surgeon didn’t exactly bring all the feels either. And neither did the immunotherapy infused nightcap that ended our anniversary date.

After a full day of getting poked and prodded, she crashed in the car on the way home. It was maybe our oddest anniversary in a quarter century of marriage and 32 years together, but we still spent it together. 

Together being thankful that we’ll have the rest of our lives to remember this phase of life.