Chemo-Therapist: How Cancer Cured a Marriage

by Mary Potter Kenyon

Overview

“Brings transparency, honesty, humor, and hope to spouses and family members caring for loved ones with cancer . . . a must-read.” —Shelly Beach, Christy Award-winning author of Ambushed By Grace: Help & Hope on the Caregiving Journey

Initially, after David’s diagnosis, I would cringe when I read books or articles by cancer survivors who stated that cancer had been a gift in their lives. How could all that David endured be viewed as a gift? The invasive surgery, the weeks of chemotherapy and radiation: a gift? Yet, after the cancer, David would often reach for my hand and say, “If it is cancer that is responsible for our new relationship, then it was all worth it.” And I’d reluctantly agree that cancer had been a gift in our lives. We’d both seen the other alternative: patients and survivors who had become bitter and angry, and neither one of us wanted to become that.

After Mary Potter Kenyon’s husband, David, was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2006, she would serve as his companion during Wednesday chemotherapy treatments, Mary began journaling about their experience as a couple and parents of young children as they navigated the labyrinth of cancer. It soon dawned on her that between working and raising a large family, the two had somehow lost touch with each other over the years—and that things were about to change. Chemo-Therapist: How Cancer Cured a Marriage is a moving and inspiring testimonial of a relationship renewed by the shared experience of a life-threatening illness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938301667
Publisher:	Familius
Publication date:	05/07/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Mary Potter Kenyon works as Program Coordinator for Shalom Spirituality Center and is a public speaker, a workshop presenter, and a writing instructor. Mary is the author of five previous Familius titles, including the award-winning Refined by Fire: A Journey of Grief and Grace, and is widely published in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies, including ten Chicken Soup for the Soul books.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 2:The Diagnosis
 
            For years my rare lone bubble baths always included at least one floating toy army man or hard plastic cow figure, and usually by bath’s end, an ecstatic toddler who stripped off their clothes and jumped in. The end tables in our home were inevitably strewn with books and toys and our van littered with candy wrappers and stray shoes. Small fingerprints marred our woodwork and windows. Ours was a child-centered home, which just makes sense since children outnumbered adults in our house ever since 1987.
            By 2006 we were living in rural Dyersville, Iowa, in a rented farmhouse with our five youngest children. Unable to find work in his chosen profession of social work, David had been working as a maintenance worker at a nursing home for almost nine years and I stayed home and homeschooled our children. My job was to stretch our limited income as far as possible and I’d gotten quite proficient at it, matching sale prices with coupons and stockpiling items that were either free or cost just pennies. I dressed our children well with bargains from the clearance racks and thrift store finds. A couple of our babies were outfitted completely in high-end boutique quality organic cotton children’s clothing, courtesy of a woman who bartered with me, sending me gently used, expensive infant clothing in exchange for books I found for her. I supplemented our income by selling short articles and essays I wrote. I’d also spent several years selling extra books from our family book sale hunts, paying for our own purchases in the process and networking with other homeschoolers. I was busy all the time, and if asked, would have said that was typical for any homeschooling mother of a large family. I can think of many mornings when in the daze of a long to-do list, I actually pushed my husband David out the door to leave for work so we could begin our real day without him. Many times he left with little more than a perfunctory peck on the cheek from me, usually given grudgingly since I really didn’t have time for anything else.
            During all those years raising young children David and I hadn’t exactly lost sight of our marriage but it had been a long time since we’d held hands, drank gallons of coffee like we had while in college, and just talked. We’d gotten apathetic when it came to working at our marriage, and I had accepted it as natural for a couple busy with small children. David had been sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our bedroom for almost three years, since the birth of our youngest, Abby, in July of 2003. It was just easier for nighttime nursing to share a bed with my last four babies. With each baby it seemed to take longer to ease them into their own bed. Emily was born in 1996 and slept with us for over two years. Katie was born in January of 2000 and stayed in our room until her sister was born in 2003.
            A week before her third birthday I decided it was time to wean Abby to a toddler bed next to ours. That same week David would be visiting an ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT), about a lump he’d noticed on the left side of his neck. Our doctor had already prescribed a dose of antibiotics to see if his lymph nodes were swollen from a virus. When the lump got bigger, he ordered a CT scan, which showed a definite mass on the left side of his neck. I’m not sure what I expected to learn when I went to the appointment with David, but I wasn’t prepared to hear the “C” word.
            It took Dr. Alt, the ENT, only a few minutes to find a growth on the far back side of David’s tongue. As he informed us that he needed to do a biopsy of the lymph nodes and that he’d found a suspicious growth on the tongue, it slowly dawned on me what he was talking about.
            “Are you talking about cancer?” I asked, hoping against draining hope that he would say no.
            “Yes,” he said, “It looks like cancer.”

Table of Contents

Foreword by Dr. Susanna Gordon, radiation oncologist, Diplomat, The American Board of Radiology, trained at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine (UCLA).
 
Chapter 1:  Is This All There Is?
Chapter 2:  The Diagnosis
Chapter 3:  Treatment Begins
Chapter 4: Where Is My Daddy?
Chapter 5:  What Happens Now?
Chapter 6:  Bringing Daddy Home
Chapter 7:  Not Tonight, Honey, I’ve Got Cancer
Chapter 8:  Let the Trials Begin!
Chapter 9: Fatigue is Our Friend
Chapter 10: We Get By, With a Little Help From Our Friends
Chapter 11: Make It Mean Something
Chapter 12: Life After Cancer
Chapter 13: The Sound of the Other Shoe Dropping
Epilogue
Appendix A: Suggested Resources

Editorial Reviews

"In Kenyon’s glass-half-full memoir, she movingly explains how her husband’s tongue-cancer diagnosis turned her marriage around. Director of the Winthrop Public Library in Winthrop, Iowa, and a widely published writer, Kenyon is also a staunch Catholic. She and her husband, David, a trained social worker who worked as a maintenance man at a nursing home, raised eight kids, whom Kenyon homeschooled. Not surprisingly, the family felt financial stress, but once she learns she could lose David, Kenyon realizes she has always been so busy with the house and kids that she neglected their relationship. The couple started saying, 'I love you,' and holding each other close. 'We had become a kinder, gentler household,' Kenyon writes. In other words, as their radiation oncologist says in a short foreword, 'Cancer does not have to change everything in a negative way.' Each chapter starts with an inspirational quote from a wide range of sources, and some readers may feel uncomfortable with Kenyon’s religious tone. But, overall, the story, which ends after Kenyon loses her husband to a heart attack, does hold universal appeal as Kenyon reminds all of us to better appreciate loved ones while they’re alive."
—Karen Springen, Booklist

“Mary Potter Kenyon tells a beautiful love story, describing her life as a mother of eight home-schooled children, struggling with financial problems, and the trauma of her husband’s fight against oral cancer. She serves up strong illustrative details covered with a double topping of honesty. No sugar coating here. If you’ve ever driven past a stranger’s house and wondered what goes on behind closed doors, you’ll want to open this book. But be fully warned! You’ll have trouble putting it down.”
—Elaine Fantle Shimberg, author of Blending Families and co-author of The Complete Single Father
 
“This intensely personal book openly talks about the issues that families face when a spouse is facing serious cancer treatments. Mary’s frank writing about the emotional problems they faces as a family and as a couple should be required reading for couples facing any life and death medical condition. Finding ‘the gift’ of a new relationship in the midst of stress and daily living will, I hope, inspire others to reach for the same goal.”
—Jean Reed, co-author with her husband Donn, Lifetime Learning Companion
 
“Mary Potter Kenyon shares the story of what happened to her family when her husband David was diagnosed with oral cancer, and the story she weaves is compelling, enlightening, and utterly engaging. Every so often a book comes along which seizes the reader’s attention and draws him into the life and the everyday concerns of another person, a book which informs and illuminates and makes the reader stop and think hard about his own life. This is such a book.”
—Helen Hegener, author of Alternatives in Education, The Homeschool Reader, and The Mantanuska Colony Barns

"Mary Potter Kenyon brings transparency, honesty, humor, and hope to spouses and family members caring for loved ones with cancer. With deep insight, she shares that illness can unlock doors to deeper levels in our relationships and lead us to new discoveries about ourselves and others. Chemo-Therapist is a must-read book about living and loving for anyone who wants to discover how to find joy in each day."
—Shelly Beach, Christy award-winning author of Ambushed By Grace: Help Hope on the Caregiving Journey and Precious Lord, Take My Hand: Meditations for Caregivers

"This is an excellent book. It’s a cancer story. It’s a love story. It’s a struggling-to-get-by story. But what I saw weaved through every piece is that overwhelmingly it is a God story. One well worth getting comfortable in your favorite chair and reading over a cup of coffee (probably with a box of kleenex)."
—Kim Harms, blogger, 26 Letters—Countless Stories

"Yes, this story is about cancer . . . This story helps the reader understand answers questions and gives a glimpse into what can be expected . . . Mary tells it like it really happened, the good, the bad, the ugly and, but not least, the joy. I was changed by absorbing her words."
—Mona Rottinghaus, blogger

From the Publisher