By Bonnie Culverhouse
When a loved one is critically ill, there are no instruction manuals … at least not for the caregivers. And one night, when he couldn’t sleep, Nick Cox, who had just taken the oath of office as Minden’s new mayor, decided he would write one someday. And someday came, so he did.
Nick’s wife, Cayla is thankfully in remission with breast cancer, but along the way the two would read material describing her journey and what to expect.
“He (Nick) joked with husbands of a couple of friends of ours who had gone through it that he was going to write a book ‘Crap, my wife has cancer,’ because there was nothing for the spouses,” Cayla said. “And then, later on, he decided to get serious about it.”
Nick said one night toward the end of Cayla’s treatments – when he couldn’t sleep – he wrote down every chapter on his phone’s notepad.
“The next day I told Cayla, I wrote the outline for my book last night,” he said.
It would be several months before Nick wrote the first chapter of Oh Crap! My Wife has Breast Cancer, but after each one, he would let Cayla read it.
“Honestly, it (Cayla’s illness) was very traumatic for me, as the caretaker,” Nick said. “It was very difficult for her, but it was hard for me to play that role … it was challenging. There were so many dark days and so many unknowns.”
Nick and Cayla agree that knowing what they were facing would have made facing the challenges much easier – hence the book as a form of support for persons who may not be as public as the Cox family has been with their journey.
Nick wrote the book, start to finish – in his own words with no ghost writer and Cayla as his only proofreader.
“I’m not a writer, but I am a reader,” he explained. “I just wanted to get it out there.”
Why Oh Crap! My Wife has Breast Cancer as the title?
“It started out as a joke,” Cayla said, “but we knew it was the kind of title that would resonate with a lot of people.”
Each chapter tells a different phase of the journey – some more personal than others, but each ends with key summary points that are helpful even if the reader’s issues are entirely different.
“I wrote it for me … for someone in my position or a couple, whether a husband or a wife in our positions, hoping it would be helpful at some point, and I could give it to them,” Nick said.
Most important to Nick and Cayla were the friends who said they were praying for them and meant it.
“We knew it and could feel it,” he said.
“And the cards,” Cayla added. “We have a huge box of cards. It just means something special when you have it in writing.”
The Cox family has taken the bumpy road of this journey and found a way to make it a little smoother, if possible, for others who find themselves on it. It is worth the read.
Oh Crap! My Wife has Breast Cancer is available at Amazon and Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Tolino, Scribd, OverDrive, Bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, Google Play Books, Hoopla, Vivlio and BorrowBox.