Coming out of the Fog “Finally”

I am starting this blog on the third anniversary of my husband’s death. I shall dedicate this blog to him. Rauf passed away on January 25, 2010 at 1:22 p.m. Rauf was 41 years old. Rauf told me his family was coming to take him home to die, however he died before he could go to Pakistan, his family in Pakistan watched him die on a webcam from the hospital.  This is a day I will never forget for many reasons. My husband battled a very rare cancer called Cholangiocarcinoma, in better to understand terms; bile duct cancer. He was diagnosed in 2006, not quite one year after our daughter Sara was born and we were told it was a very aggressive cancer and he was expected to live no more than six months. This news was devastating but unbelievable,I was frantically searching for every miracle cure known to man, and every facility that claimed to be the best at treating cancer. My husband was a stubborn man, born in Pakistan, and this is a story we will talk about later. His stubborn ways and my frantic searching led us to Cancer Treatment Centers of America, there he was treated over several years with chemo and radiation. It is so sad to see someone once so vibrant to become so sick from the treatments. I remember before his first radiation treatment he made me shave his head because he could not bear to watch his hair fall out. He had a nice head of hair as most Pakistani men do, and he was a little partial to it, and I cried as I shaved his head, and watched as his hair fell to the floor. He looked at me and said “no tears” what are you crying about? I could see it in his face that he already knew why I was crying; but he was staying strong and fighting his own personal battle. He was determined, and he worked whenever he was not away at the hospital. He was a psychologist, and worked with mentally ill adults, he was caring, but never showed it, he was loving, but never rarely showed that either, and he was a very hard man to read therefore, we never spoke of death or his illness. After his diagnosis my heart was breaking, it felt like someone was literally tearing my heart out, and I felt like I was in a nightmare that had no end. After his death, this became a reality for me .Rauf came to America in November 2002 after my visit to meet his family in January 2002, and I just could not believe that his dream of living in America was going to be so short lived. I was to the point of going crazy with heartbreak and worry, and we had a new baby to think about. I made a trip to the doctor because I started experiencing panic attacks. My doctor prescribed me Xanax….today I call it the most evil of all prescription medications, but up until recently I called them my “life savers”. I am recovering on my own from a two year addiction that reached the point of no return, at least that is what I thought.  You see I not only lost my husband to cancer, I also lost him to another women who was pregnant with his child during the last year of his life. Yes another woman and she was pregnant! I was shocked to the point I became numb and I honestly could not think rationally, on top of this I was fighting for custody of my daughter who was 11 years old at the time, and I was eating Xanax like candy .My reality had become a living nightmare from which I just recently recovered and woke up and I finally “CAME OUT OF THE FOG” and Rauf finally went home… I will continue my writing tomorrow and stay tuned for all the details of my trip to Pakistan, shortly after 9/11,an American woman traveling alone to Pakistan really raised some eyebrows, my encounter with the “other woman”, my custody battle, and my Xanax addiction….the list is long so stay tuned for some very long, yet interesting blogs from me. ©