Cheri,
You are absolutely right. I can appreciate your sad-funny story about the fundraiser and I invite you to tell us others.
My wife and I have always relied heavily on a sense of humor to get us through difficult times (and to enjoy good times that much more). Sometimes it's hard to avoid making a wisecrack when it comes to mind despite the risk that someone else will think we're making light of a serious situation. But, at least for us, humor is one of the best coping tools.
For some reason we still laugh when we think back on some of the mini-disasters during my wife's treatment. I guess they're some of the most memorable events.
One was when we were staying in a little residence unit on the hospital campus during my wife's pre-transplant radiation treatments:
The radiation left her nauseous and she'd get sick to her stomach at the slightest smell of food. It got so that just talking about food made her feel icky. The trouble was that we'd brought food supplies so that I could feed myself while taking care of her that first week.
The unit was like a tiny one-bedroom apartment, with a kitchenette area near the door. I'd stay in the kitchenette area and try to prepare myself food without letting any smells get over to the other side of the room. I made it a habit to go outside to eat my meals on a patio. Even though she had no appetite herself she wanted to know that I wasn't starving, but without discussing food. She solved the problem by saying "Tell me IF you ate, not WHAT you ate." I'd say yes.
One evening I microwaved myself a frozen dinner. While it was cooking I opened the patio door and put my tableware out there. Then, when the microwave beeped, I grabbed potholders, opened the microwave door, and as quickly as I could whisked the cooked dinner out of the room to the patio so I could eat it out of "nose range." But in the less than 2 seconds it was in the room, she got sick again. It was comically awful for her.
Now we laugh that she could be so sensitive that 2 seconds was too long to be in the room with food, and we still say "Tell me
IF you ate, not
WHAT you ate" to each other as a joke.
