Bravery vs the Absence of fear or how does being supportive work?

So, this week was packed with stuff. Monday I went all the way down to Cardiff and back to get Bob and Von here for the week. Tuesday Cancer centre with my wife, Wednesday and Thursday early shifts in bakery, Friday even earlier and for 9 to Oxford to the dentist with my wife for a pre-transplant check. Saturday I brought our Cardiff critters back home and today I was at work from 7 to 5. Dead on my feet now. But – when I wasn’t at work – I got time to spend with my favourite in-laws aka my wife’s brother and sis-in-law. And my wife got to see her family before she goes for her bone marrow transplant next month.

That’s a Big and Scary thing. I think she is brave, she says she is not.

There is a lot that can go wrong. Heavy chemotherapy to blast the old stemcells to bits, Rejection of the transplant, graft versus host disease, or simply an infection. Any infection. To put it bluntly: A simple snotty nose could kill her. Dr Bob said 60% of the patient survive the first 2 years. Sounds good at first, but then you think: 40% don’t make it. Then why take that risk when chemotherapy so far had helped? Because after 10 years of chemo it stopped working as it should. Because it’s the transplant or dying. Am I scared? Hell yes, I’m more scared than ever in my life. But – and here I went very wrong – in trying to be all strong and positive and supportive, I shut out the fact of how much could go wrong, and I didn’t admit how very scared I am. It made my wife feel like everyone just pacifies her and she is not allowed to be scared.

And Helen is scared. She would be weird if she wasn’t. She said she isn’t brave, because she is scared. She doesn’t feel brave because she doesn’t have a choice.

I say bravery doesn’t mean the absence of fear, but to do something despite being scared. And I think she made the brave choice. Instead of going on with the chemo for however long she might have left, she opted for the transplant. It could kill her, it could leave her with massive side effects and it can easily take 2 years to recover from the procedure even if everything goes to plan. So she chose the scary risky thing for a chance to live.

And despite everything she says I think she is very brave and plain amazing.

And eventually I understood that being supportive doesn’t just mean being positive, or going to appointments with her or informing myself about everything involved. It also means to be scared together, that being strong means to look the ugly things square in the eyes and acknowledge them. Admitting my own fears makes her able to tell me how scared she really is without feeling like a chicken.