By Nora Fields

Last time, I was poking fun at my leisurely retirement routine. Three years ago, I would have given anything to be that bored.

Until cancer hits your home — or you work in the field of medicine — you probably don’t know much about it. You’re busy with life. So were we.

When Thurston got sick, I added caregiver and nurse to my résumé overnight. I’ve never been known for sympathy. I’m more of a “suck it up, buttercup” kind of woman. Many a broken bones have healed themselves because of my “they won’t do anything about it anyway” approach to medicine.  But the pain he was experiencing was unlike anything I had ever seen. My tough-as-nails farmer was crumbling, and all I could do was watch.

I did what I could control. I researched. I tracked bloodwork in spreadsheets. I monitored symptoms. I tried to stay one step ahead of something that refused to be predictable. They call it “practicing” medicine for a reason. Even the experts can’t always see what’s coming.

After months of escalating pain and unanswered questions, we made the decision to travel to Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The Friday before we left, I landed on a likely diagnosis. A week later, doctors confirmed it: myelofibrosis — a rare bone marrow cancer.  This was March.

We left Mayo with news no one is prepared to hear — a three-year life expectancy.  Maybe a bone marrow transplant in the future. Yet as strange as it may sound, we were relieved to have a number. And now we knew what we were fighting.  Three years were much longer than we were expecting at that point.  We had a plan.

It only took a week for that plan to change.  What was “maybe a transplant in the future” became “we need to start looking for a donor now and plan for a transplant this summer”.  It felt like the rug had been pulled out from under our feet; three years suddenly shrank to three months. 

It’s moments like that that split your life into Before and After. The little things lose their urgency. The important things come into sharp focus.

So, when I complain about the television being on volume 16 or joke about retirement being exhausting; understand this –  I don’t take a single one of those ordinary mornings for granted.

The boredom?
It’s a gift.

We’re all aging.
Let’s do it out loud.

Nora

As printed in The County Journal on May 23, 2026.