Hi! It’s me, Sapana.

I haven’t written yet and thought I should — mainly because of one question I get a ton — “How are you doing?”

The answer to that extremely well-meaning question is frustratingly so complicated.

In the day-to-day, I’m fine. Busy, but fine. I don’t let myself Google what’s normal for colon cancer, what the percentages are for outcomes, what side effects should look like — I just have to trust the care team that Sachin has, what he says he feels like and go with that. And this week — he said he felt pretty normal and doesn’t have chemo, which is fantastic.

I also don’t really have time to think about everything when my toddler pees on the floor because he would rather try to kick one more goal than run to the bathroom. Or my disabled six year old tries to eat my houseplants and I fish leaves out of his mouth.

But then there are quiet moments that I stop and realize, wow my husband has stage 4 cancer. How is it possible? How did this happen? Are we just profoundly unlucky people?

And what I’ve come up with is — no, we are not. We are so lucky.

We have a ridiculously loving community of people worldwide and that’s why people are constantly checking in.

I haven’t felt so overwhelmingly loved in my entire life:

I have friends who I haven’t spoken to since high school reaching out and asking how they can help. College friends banding together to send me gifts, offering to fly across the country to help, and check-in. A friend from my first job out of college working for a senator offered to babysit my kids. Actually friends from every place I’ve worked who’ve reached out or donated some funds thinking of us. Local friends and family babysitting our kids on barely any notice. Community I barely know making us meals, making sure we’re eating. A wildly large pot of money for DoorDash and Instacart to make sure we can order anything we want when Sachin doesn’t want to eat anything we have in the house (thank you so much!!). My brother-in-law flying out to help out so I can fly out to see Taylor Swift in Denver next week. My parents making sure that I don’t have to do all the laundry and covering so much. Sujata coming out without my even needing to ask at the beginning of this craziness.

And these are just my friends and family — and I’m not even the sick one! It honestly brings me to tears thinking about how much you’re there for me and my family.

So every day is a rollercoaster, where I try not to have quiet moments. Where I exercise because it’s the only time I think about one thing (that thought is “damn, i really hate exercise because wow my body hurts”).

But overall I think we are so happy to have all of you. I’m so grateful for the love, we feel it every day, and it makes our lives just that much better. It’s just the beginning of this whole thing — Sachin still has 3-5 more chemo sessions, then surgery, then another 6 months of chemo.

That said, given how many people have reached out or helped, we have some long haul friends and I’m so, so lucky you’re here.