Love Conquers All

Hey, I'm Angie and welcome to my podcast, chaotic harmony. So I'm about to say something that may sound really fucked up, subrace yourself. As scary as my husband, Tony's cancer diagnosis and journey has been thus far, I am actually thankful for it. Yeah, I am thankful for his cancer. It sounds ridiculous. I know. But can you hear me out a little? In the almost 17 years that we have been together, and 14 of those years married, Tony and I had a routine. We had the same vision and understanding for our blended family. I was the stay at home mother. I took care of the children and the house and everything else that came with it. He worked outside of the home and managed all of our finances for the both part. In other words, he brought home the bacon and I cooked it up. We were a team. Well, we still are, but just hear me out. We were a team. For the most part, that system worked well for the both of us. Sure. We couldn't afford the most expensive toys and trips and all that for our family. And yeah, there were moments where things got tough. But overall, we always managed to figure it out. Our main focus was, in my opinion, survival. We did the best we could with what we had. And because of the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, Tony and I didn't have all that quality time we had when we first started dating. We had eight kids depending on us. But really when I say kids, I mean boner killers. They somehow managed to work in walk-in on Tony and I while we were going at it more times than I could care to recount. And well, they killed the frickin' romance. Killed the boner. One time there was a child wearing an oversized football helmet, staring deep into our souls through our half-opened bedroom door that we thought was locked. Who am I kidding? It was more than once. And if I'm going to be honest, I believe we were walked in on by like all of our children at one point or another. I could go as far as calling them cock blockers. Yeah, I like that better actually. We were surrounded by a bunch of cock blockers. Just saying cock blockers. That's actually a good reference to call little kids to turn on when you're trying to get out. Yep, I'm going to, for now on, my kids are going to be called cock blockers. That's end of it. Anyway, many, and I mean many of our daily conversations were cut short with mom, it's my turn. What's for supper? Tons of taddling, tons of whining, or an occasional prank. My favorite prank, due to the mind fuckery that it took, was from my bonus daughter, Shelby. Running into the house and throwing yourself onto the couch in the middle of Tony and I. And then shortly after she's settled in without saying a word to the either of us, three other children would barge their way into the house yelling, she's lying. Yeah, it was an amazing prank to think about it. I mean that really took some mind fuckery there. And by the time all of our kids' chaos I got unsettled with, whatever conversation my husband and I were having literally became unimportant. Which is why I label that phase of our marriage as a survival mode. Now I want to make this very clear. Tony and I, in my opinion, never stop loving each other during this time. We just prioritized our children over everything else. Then time passed by. Way too much if you ask me. And our children slowly turned into adults. Well, adults according to the government anyways. That meant I had less children to cook for, care for, and clean up after. Funny how that works. When they are younger, I would find myself thinking, I cannot wait until they grow up. So I do not have to step on another goddamn Lego. And then they grew up. And I miss stepping on those goddamn Legos. When our households started getting smaller and less hacked, I almost had a full blown midlife crisis. I was lost. I had to figure out what my new purpose in life was. Because for all of my adult life, literally all of my adult life, my sole purpose was our children. I did not know how to cope with that much change in such a short amount of time. I actually missed the piles of laundry, the endless dishes, the laughter at midnight on a school day. The worst part about all of this was I was scared of what might become of my marriage as we entered into this new phase in our lives. I mean, think about it for the longest time, 99.9% of our daily conversations and interactions that we had were about the children, the household, and the bills. Our entire relationship was built around our children. We never actually really gave ourselves a lot of time to date in the beginning. I'd like to think. Tony attempted to guide me through this phase, but let's be real. I wasn't listening. I never listened. I wasn't listening to most of what he said for a while there because I wasn't ready to give up my pity party. Who really is? I mean, when a girl is going off and having a pity party, she don't need anybody going, come on, let me fix it. She just wants to have that pity party. So I was refusing to have him stop my pity party. And he really, honestly, such a sweet sweet man just really wanted me to shut the fuck up or stop whining or both of them. Honestly, if this shoe was on the other foot, I'm not sure I would have handled this little crisis of mine as well as he did. Who wants to come home after a long day at work and just sit there and listen to me cry about the lack of chores and children I had left? Is there anyone out there? Anyone? Yeah, that's what I thought. The real kicker here is, it wasn't really even about the children or the lack of noise and chores. It was my insecurities. And all of the pity parties I threw just pushed Tony further away from me. The exact opposite of what I really wanted. So are those pity parties that these women like me are throwing really worth it? Probably not. They are doing more harm than good. Just throw that out there. Not the pity parties. But yeah, I felt like I was pushing him away and I honestly feel like I am the best when it comes to pushing the ones I love away. I really am. I should get an award for it. I need to at least put that on the wall or get a medal. I'd like a medal. Yeah. I want to get away around. Guess what? I push people away. Anyway. It's almost a hidden talent of mine and I'm not super proud of it, but yeah, that kind of am. But I'm not going to deny any of it either, right? It is what it is. At the end of the day, I was scared. Scared that Tony was going to leave me like my children were doing. And now I knew our children weren't actually leaving me. I mean, they were just growing up, doing adult things kind of, sorta. But to me, I sure the fuck felt like it. It's that empty nest syndrome. Even though I have one here. It doesn't matter. It was the empty nest syndrome and it sucks. So yeah, menopause and my mental illness really did play a big role in this time period. And then yeah, I slowly started figuring it out and got a new routine and realized that my children were not my only purpose I had in life. It's cold for I started listening to Tony's advice more and crying about everything else less. I hated admitting that. I don't like to admit when he's right sometimes. But yeah, with time and tons of practice, I did start to feel a little better. I realized that this is actually the time where Tony and I could be a couple, rediscover each other. All of those times that I laid in bed late at night wishing we could afford a babysitter so we could just go on a date. Those days and nights were gone. We now could literally grab our keys and go anywhere we wanted. Well, anywhere we could afford, which is like a parking lot right now. We don't have to worry too much about one of our children walking in on us while we're getting frisky because most of them are out and the remaining children that stayed at home no better. Kind of. Okay, not really. Either way, once I saw all of these positives, my relationship with my husband started to improve. This new phase in our lives gave us the opportunity to find each other again. We started to laugh more, create more inside jokes. We took more adventures on the back roads. We were starting to give a fuck less. I was no longer as sad about our children being gone as I was before. I was working on being the best wife I could be. Life felt right for once. I truly felt like we were exactly where we were supposed to be. And I might add, Tony looked a little happier. You know, little happier than he usually was, maybe. I'm just saying, I'm saying looking. I'm not saying he was actually feeling it because I cannot understand that man to save my life, but he looked a little happier. And then, then he started to not feel good. Well, to be honest, he didn't feel like the greatest on and off for several years, but we chalked it up to his diabetes or whatever else we decided to blame the symptoms on. Now, if anyone is like me, I just assume I'm a doctor and I know exactly what is wrong with me because the symptoms I have, even though they could be symptoms from something else or something else or something else. So yeah, one day it was a flu. He wasn't feeling good the next day. He had the diarrhea. Well, guess what? You got diarrhea. I don't know, maybe you have the flu. Maybe you have COVID. It was, we were constantly finding our own diagnosis of what's wrong with him instead of actually bringing him to a doctor. Yeah. He would come home after work and fall asleep almost immediately. Most of the time, I would have to wake him up so he could eat supper. And then shortly after that, he would fall back asleep and result for the rest of the night. Again, we chalked this behavior up to his workload that day or what time he got up that morning or what he ate for supper or breakfast or diabetes. Our conversations were almost limited to the morning break text that I would get around 9 o'clock, 8.45 to 9 o'clock in the morning of, "I love you, hun. I love you, babe. I love you, baby. I love you sweet cheeks." Every day. Love that man for that. And the two to four minute phone call at the start of his lunch break just to check in on me. And then he came home and did all that. So I started to miss him badly. He had a hard time understanding. And I'm pretty sure he still has a hard time understanding why or how I could miss him when he was right there. He was like physically right there in my bed right next to me. How could you miss me when I'm right here on? I don't understand you. I don't understand what's going on in your head. Dude, maybe it's because you're there, but you're unconscious. That's probably why I missed you. But I also missed everything else. Everything that we had just rebuilt together. The more time that went on, the worse his symptoms were, and then bam! In a matter of seconds, I went from poor me, I missed him. To wait. No, this cannot be the end of our story. That kiss I gave him as he was willing off to surgery was not the last kiss. Yeah. That is a very quick snap to go from, I miss him, I can't. Pretty party to this cannot be the last of our story. Oh my god, is he going to die? Yeah, it's very dramatic. I understand that, but that's how it went. I had spent a very large amount of time over the course of our relationship. I have an average comparing our relationship to others. I allowed my own insecurities to get in the middle of us. And what good did that do? Nothing, it did absolutely nothing. All that I ended up doing with that was wasting my time. Time happens to be the most valuable thing that you can have. Time is priceless. Now I have had many life lessons to teach me this, but I will tell you the strongest one would be when your husband's in the exploratory surgery and I have to think of all the bad things that might happen and I know he's fucking sick because it was bad and it was scary. So I wasted a lot of freaking time. A lot because as soon as I was sitting in that waiting room, it's like holy crap. All that time I spent wasting, you know, oh my god, I could have been doing something else with him. I could have been trying to have a better conversation with him, a more productive conversation with him, you know, a more productive time spent with him. So yeah, don't waste your freaking time. Okay, enough about that, Ram. This is where I'm going to sound ridiculous once again. I, Angela Schultz, am thankful for my husband Tony's diagnosis and journey with cancer. cancer came into our lives when Tony and I were, dare I say, remodeling our relationship. We were, well at least I was, and acting like we were teenagers in love again. Like we were rediscovering ourselves, we were going on dates and we were having fun without kids, you know. And then cancer decided to pop up, uninvited and show me that Tony and I, we actually had some more work to do as a couple. Yeah. We needed to be challenged yet again. I guess, you know, because why not, I really wish it would have been more something, you know, something else other than cancer. I really do. However, I had no choice in the manner. It was cancer. Cancer is what made me do this. Now, let me be very, very clear here. I don't actually mean that I am thankful that my husband has cancer. I want wish cancer on my worst enemy. What I mean is I am thankful for everything that it has done for us as a couple. We are stronger than we have ever been. We have had to learn how to live with the diagnosis and adapt to all the drastic changes it caused together. We had to learn all of the new medical things that needed to be done at home. And that is kind of a tricky one because when I am in shock, I accidentally blocked people out. I did it a lot in the hospital. So we had a few moments in the show. home of uncertainty. Like one time Tony was laying on the foot of our bed all exposed and I mean like his new butthole on his belly that they call a ostomy was exposed and we were going back and forth while it's all exposed and it was all about his clostomy bag like how it was supposed to be attached and the steps to do it and so on and I'm like I know what I'm doing and he's like no you don't you're doing it wrong it just got all confusing especially when you were a beginner he's sitting there like are are you sure I'm like yeah I'm sure I was never sure he had an option at that moment to trust me or do it himself my guy chose to trust me he also chose to trust me when he needed to be disconnected from his chemo pump now that that is brave that was even a bigger deal I had to disconnect the chemo pump flush the saline solution through the IV and then grab that needle that was in his chest in his chemo port and yank it out he looked nervous as hell the first time but I pulled that sucker out but yeah it was I was actually nervous as hell I should say I looked to nervous as hell and he was more like the mere he was my reflection I was looking at I'm like are you fucking sure you want me to do this and he's like just do it and he closes his eyes and then bam I got it out but now my guy just lays there like I'm interrupting his TV show he kind of makes it seem like I'm in his way so he like moves his head now I'm like just fucking sits still and he doesn't put the little attitude might I add I think he's catching my attitude and that's another thing I didn't even think about that I'm rubbing off on him way too much because he's also talking back to me way too much oh my god now that I'm saying this all out loud cancer in a way has forced him to surrender to me to submit to me kind of like that that's actually pretty amazing revelation if I dare say so Tony isn't a huge let's talk about our feelings kind of guy however he has out loud said things to me like I really appreciate you I am lucky to have you I love you so much I don't know what I would do without you that's actually exactly how we sounds too I really appreciate you I am lucky to have you I love you so much baby I don't know what I would do without you yep again that sounds exactly like if I am spot on it's almost feels like this whole situation literally opened him up just a little bit more like I said maybe he's just I'm rubbing off on him I always knew that he felt like that but I never actually he never really expressed it very well he's never good at that so now he kind of is getting better at it and it catches me off guard when he says stuff like recently I'm like really are you are you like being serious right now because he said something along the lines of you know I actually really appreciate what you're doing because I don't I'm like lucky to have you I don't know any if anybody else would do this for me no hang on I'm like really lucky to have you like I don't know if anybody else would do this for me and I'm like really no because it really catches me off guard I'm not used to it and then we joke around and we use sarcasm so much that I truly didn't know if he was being like being serious or not and when he elaborated on the matter I felt a little tingle run through my body like seriously I'm sitting here putting a class to be bag on and everything I do like I had a tingle and it wasn't a you gross to his comments actually meant the world to me and it caught me off guard but like I said the only problem I have is our sarcasm every time he said something like that I was changing his ostomy bag and our room smelled like a damn septic tank so did he like really mean it I'm not sure I'm gonna believe that he did you know what though I don't really care either way he said it and I know he truly meant it because otherwise he wanted to said it because he's not one of those kind of guys he's like an old-fashioned kind of guy and that's what I like so it still counts and all seriousness though we no longer are the couple that we were before cancer it's like the before cancer couple the after yeah that is what I'm trying to get at like we have grown so much as a couple but so much more as individuals we definitely learned not to take each other for granted I just I really only wish it didn't take cancer for us to pause life and like do the work that we actually needed to do you know because that that's the sucky part it always ends up taking a tragedy for you to realize something and that's annoying like why did it take cancer for me to stop and go wait pause the pity party take action do it grow be happy why I hate it but that's why I'm thankful for cancer so yeah here's where I get to tell you to stop waiting for the opportunity and just go and fucking do it fix that relationship fix yourself take that job opportunity go on navigation don't allow a tragedy like ours to finally open your eyes please don't seriously I would like to dedicate this to my husband Tony our 14th wedding anniversary is just a few days away and I want you to know that I truly will forever be by your side whether you like it or not I will never stop annoying you because deep down inside you'll love it and you know it thank you for sharing showing me what true love is and hon you will always be my forever I love you sweet cheeks thank you for listening to me ramble on and on I really truly appreciate all of your support I really do if you haven't yet go on my Facebook page chaotic harmony and give her a like and you know what also go on there and put like let me know what you would do to fix your life right now without hesitation what what would you like to change what are you doing right now just let me know if you would like to support my podcast just click on the support the show link and after you have done all that go outside and embrace that weird neighbor of yours and make normal feel boring. Bye!