Because that’s what survivors do

By John Bach

This home movie screenshot is Julie holding Greta in the hospital two days after her c-section.

I used to never wake up in the middle of the night, but as I get older those times seem to be over. After about four good hours of sleep, I often wake up only to lie in bed and think. The other night I couldn’t stop pondering all the medical procedures that Julie’s already endured since our girls were born.

If you’ve ever watched a c-section, you know it’s not all that dissimilar from field dressing a deer. If it weren’t for the perfect little life forms exiting from that brutal surgery, those bloody sights would only live on as traumatic memories in my head. Instead, they got filed under “joy.”

Still, I think it cost Julie a few hundred stitches to have our kids. If men had to get gutted to produce offspring, society would hang a medal for valor around our necks. Not the ladies, though. We roll them out and dump them into the minivan with a bottle of pain meds and a crying baby to keep alive as thanks.

Toss in multiple surgeries for her endometriosis, an ovary removal and a bad gallbladder. By my count, Julie’s up to nine surgeries in the last 22 years. Suffice it to say that I’m super tired of doctors carving up my wife — for good reasons or bad.

As we near the end of chemotherapy — three treatments to go — surgery is once again coming fast. Words like lumpectomy, mastectomy, reconstruction, drain tubes and hysterectomy are keeping me up at night. But she sleeps soundly.

I’m thankful Julie is tough as nails, but it’s agonizing to think of her going through another challenging recovery. Of course beating cancer is worth whatever it takes, and she’ll once again go willingly under the knife. 

Because that’s what survivors do.