SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — One step at a time.
It sounds a little trivial -- and it probably is -- but it’s how our family has gotten through the past 15 months.
Back in October 2018, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. That wasn’t a good day.
By January 2020, she was in remission and recovering from the last of many surgeries and treatments. That was a better day.
In the time between, the Renoux family took things one step at a time.
Like so many, when our family first heard the diagnosis there were tears ... but also determination. After all, we caught it early, and our outcome looked much better than what others get.
We decided to tell our 9-year-old daughter nearly everything along the way, and tried to keep the process as transparent as parents can.
We sat down and talked about the options for treatment. We live in Summit County and there’s an excellent program, but we decided on the UCHealth Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora because all the treatments and doctors are under one very big roof.
For me, the bonus turned out to be the cafeteria turkey burgers.
Visits, treatments and turkey burgers were nearly two hours from our home. It was a long drive that we did a lot, but we got to spend time together, enjoy more Interstate 70 traffic than usual and take in the powerful smell of pot shops east of the Puppy Chow plant.
Kelly‘s fight included countless tests, a double mastectomy, an ovariectomy, 16 rounds of chemotherapy, 25 rounds of radiation and reconstruction surgery.
She’s a fighter and tougher than I could ever be. She got sick from the drugs, lost her hair, was often in pain ... and never missed a step.
My role was much easier: Make Kelly smile. It’s all I knew how to do. Cancer isn’t something I can fix, but a frown is.
So, she went to work fighting the cancer inside her and I went to work joking around. One step at a time.
We laughed when we shaved her head. How often does a guy get to shave his wife’s head and still stay married to her? We laughed about the wigs we bought her, one of which I’ve worn around the house more than Kelly. We laughed at our new I-70 commute.
We even found a way to joke while she sat through chemo. Sometimes our daughter Sonnett came too. She and I laughed a lot, making up stories behind the western paintings hanging in the hospital hallways and exploring the campus. She became a big fan of the turkey burgers as well.
The goal was to keep them both laughing. Keep them both positive and do it one step at a time.
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I couldn’t look at the long list of everything Kelly needed to do but one thing at a time, that was manageable. We also knew we were blessed that Kelly’s fight could be won while others aren’t so lucky.
Luck can be looked at in many ways. At the same time as all this, Kelly’s mom was also fighting breast cancer. She was diagnosed about eight months before Kelly, and as luck would have it, was one of the reasons Kelly caught her cancer so early. Susan [Kelly's mother] tested positive for the BRCA2 gene which means there’s a 50% chance her children will get it.
So, Kelly got tested and found out she was BRCA2 positive the same week her mammogram results came back. Lucky for us, it set in motion an aggressive treatment plan that today has Kelly and her mom in remission.
Kelly likes to say her mom is her role model, a woman who shows grace and stubbornness when life is tough. After watching Kelly these past 15 months I can say that’s also something her mom has passed down. So much grace and stubbornness during that fight for her life.
From the night we shaved her head, to every minute she had to sit in the chemo chair and every day she kicked cancer's butt.
I’ve never seen Kelly more beautiful, or strong, every step of the way, one step at a time.