Sometimes you just have to keep going.  Whether you're trying to track down the wounded bird you thought you heard in the bush and have wound up ankle-wrapped in grass taller than your head or you have embarked on a rather large graphite drawing and well into it you discover you have no idea what you're doing or you cruising along happily married and then discover your husband has a progressive disease and that the future  envisioned will be entirely different than what you'd scripted.  Even then, you just have to keep going. 

Sometimes I scare myself by taking the long look into the future.  Rather useless obviously for the long look I might have taken two years ago has absolutely nothing to do with present reality.  In fact, if I take long looks in historical two year blocks, what I'd envisioned and the ultimate reality probably have little in common.  Oh sure, we've lived at our present address for 20 years (and who would've thought that given my peripatetic lifestyle for the previous 20 years?) but other than that?  Did I think I would get another horse or do endurance riding?  Did I think I'd be a vet nurse or learn complicated cocktails as a bartender?  Did I think I'd learn to cook and even more amazing, actually love it?  (Of all the things that I've done, that's the strangest.  As strange as suddenly discovering I went all gooey and needed to bear lots of babies!  Thankfully that didn't happen.).  I've taught conversational English and am learning French.  I became involved in bird rescue and have eleven permanent residents.  I learned about clicker training and devolved from treed to treeless saddles and bitted to bitless bridles.  I've won two firsts for drawing.  I've written a book and a half, quit smoking and become a yogini.  No cures for cancer here but a good and varied life.

So I'll keep going.  Being a carer needn't be all bleak and horrible and although it is a progressive disease, it is not a violent dissolution so there's lots and lots of time to prepare.  After all, he has no choice.  He has to keep going too.  We may as well hold hands and go together.