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"Hey, all. Genevieve again. Today we&amp;amp;#8217;ve got Jessica guest blogging from New York. She was a fan of Erin&amp;amp;#8217;s blog long before she knew anyone with cancer. Now, cancer is a big, big part of her life. Her story is amazing and I cry every time I read it. (This is a major accomplishment; the last time I cried there were broken bones involved.) Enjoy. Hi Glamour readers! My name is Jessica, and Erin has asked me to guest-blog about my experiences as a caregiver to someone with cancer. I started following Erin&amp;amp;#8217;s blog last spring after seeing Crazy Sexy Cancer on TLC. At that time, cancer was not really a part of my life, but I was interested in Erin&amp;amp;#8217;s story and really enjoyed following her pregnancy. Now, things are a bit different. As of this past October, my life was very normal. I had just celebrated my one year anniversary as a lawyer, my one year anniversary in my teeny New York City apartment, and my two year anniversary with my boyfriend Casey. Casey had finally moved to the New York area from DC, and I was enjoying having him close by. Soon after Casey moved to Long Island, he went to the doctor with a nagging cough. Within 24 hours of that visit he had a chest x-ray that showed &amp;amp;#8220;a large suspicious mass&amp;amp;#8221;. Within 48 hours, he had a CT scan that the doctors said screamed lymphoma. My Casey&amp;amp;#8212;a strong, healthy athletic guy with a little cough. Suddenly, he has cancer. The first few days were terrible. I stomped hysterically up Third Avenue as my friend tried to calm me down, reminding me that no matter how scary this was for me, it was scarier for Casey. She promised I could cry and freak out to her, but told me I had to hold it together for Casey. Hold it together? He is my soldier! Casey is the strong one. When something goes wrong it&amp;amp;#8217;s his arms I crumble into. How was I not supposed to do it this time? Calm is his forte, not mine. Still, I knew she was right. I did what I could to keep myself together. By the following Tuesday, we had the whole story. It was cancer, all right. Casey had Hodgkin&amp;amp;#8217;s Lymphoma, stage 3. He would need 12 rounds of chemotherapy and a few weeks of radiation. That Saturday was my 26th birthday. I had friends coming in from out of town and absolutely no will to party. Casey insisted I go out with my friends. He&amp;amp;#8217;s like that. Casey may be sick, but he wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t going to stop being my solider. By the time Saturday came around, Casey and I had spent a ton of time crying, hugging, talking, and napping. I took his advice and headed out to a tapas bar with my closest friends from high school. Before our first pitcher of sangria arrived, who should walk in but Erin! I recognized her from the pictures she posts- tall, long red hair, and accompanied by two tall redheaded sisters! I could not believe it. The week Casey is diagnosed with cancer, I bump into my cancer-blogger. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t want to bother Erin, but I really wanted to talk to her, so finally I worked up the nerve to follow sister Meghan to the ladies room to ask if Erin would mind if I said hello. Meghan gave the OK, so I marched up to Erin&amp;amp;#8217;s table and introduced myself. The whole table seemed happy enough to have been interrupted, and everyone&amp;amp;#8212;husbands especially&amp;amp;#8212;offered helpful advice about loving someone who is dealing with cancer. They were wonderful to me. I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t believe my luck. (Even stranger, I ran into Erin&amp;amp;#8217;s sister Meghan again the next day at the movies.) But after the excitement of the birthday and meeting Erin, real life set in again. Casey still had cancer, and we still had to deal with it. There were so many hurdles; getting an appointment with a lymphoma specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, waiting to hear whether or not it was actually Hodgkin&amp;amp;#8217;s, deciding which chemo regimen to go with, radiation versus no radiation, treatment in NYC versus treatment on Long Island, sperm banking&amp;amp;#8212;you name it, we dealt with it. Casey has a very close family, but they live far away, so I am really his primary caregiver here (he&amp;amp;#8217;d kill me for saying he needs a caregiver; Casey is the toughest guy I know). Still, I am his caregiver, in a way. I am the one who goes to chemo, who reminds him when to take pills (he does that one by himself now), who gives him injections of Neupagen and orders whatever he feels like eating. The good news is that Casey is doing fantastic. He is rarely sick (he has had 2 rounds of chemo), he is going to work, his hair has not fallen out yet, and he is handling everything like a champ. Casey is strong; there is no question he could do this by himself if he had to. But that&amp;amp;#8217;s the thing&amp;amp;#8212; he doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t have to. I am here, and I love him, and I want to do all those things for him. But I am not going to lie to you, being the person in the relationship who doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t have cancer can be kind of strange. At first, I was sad and weepy all the time. But since I wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t sick, I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t crawl into bed and pull the blanket over my head. Going to work was tough. I did not want to concentrate on anything but Casey. Plus, sitting in front of the computer was just too tempting. How many times a day can you google Hodgkins and Stanford V? Eventually, Casey settled on a treatment plan and things started to calm down. Only a month and a half has gone by since the diagnosis, and already Casey and I cannot remember what it felt like when cancer was not a part of our lives. We are a stronger team than ever before. We make our decisions together, and we lean on each other every day. I don&amp;amp;#8217;t want to say we&amp;amp;#8217;re more in love because of this, but I truly feel that we have a better understanding of what we mean to each other, and how important it is that we have one another in our lives. We have ten more rounds of chemo and a few weeks of radiation ahead of us, and we know that it is not going to be easy. There will be more romantic nights of me saying, &amp;amp;#8220;roll over, injection time&amp;amp;#8221;, head shaving, more fatigue and nausea, more food aversions, and more waiting for test results. But I&amp;amp;#8217;m not scared anymore. Casey is as strong as can be, and he has promised me that he is going to beat this, and I believe him. If you would like to follow our story, feel free to visit our blog, where I keep family and friends updated on Casey&amp;amp;#8217;s progress: http://lifeloveandlymphoma.blogspot.com/ Thank you all for listening, Jessica"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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