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Cancer...is a C***Jul 05 '10 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Only writing to exercise the demon of writer's block...and visiting an antiquated site such as this, seems fitting.
Prologue: A decade since the advent of my admission into the sponsorship of this site; and half a decade since the last pitifical post. Life has changed mucho since than, and as saying goes, the more things change, the more they really have changed. Story: A lot of great things begin with the letter C....cookies, cats, charisma, chenille, California. And yet Cancer, a C-lettered word is, perhaps the most terrifying word out there, except Chuck Norris, of course. My cancer journey began in August 2008 when my nebulous familial link otherwise known as my dad went into a hospital because his hemoglobin was dangerously low. Hemoglobin is a red pigmented molecule attached to every oxygen molecule in our body. When the numbers are low, we are said to be anemic. And when Hemoglobin is severely low, as my father's. the causative factors are usually GI bleeding. As a side note, its funny how, even as a nurse, both my mom and I missed all the warning signs that Cancer created. Back to the programming: So they did a boat-load of testing, and soon found a mass in my father's esophagus. So they did what every doctor does, they ordered more invasive, uncomfortable testing. EGD. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy. Otherwise called EGD, now you know why. The EGD found an extremely large mass in my father's esophagus that extended itself into the stomach. They clipped a microscopic piece and sent it for biopsy. The following day, myself, my mom, my brother, and a couple other relatives were in the hospital to visit my father. His face was characteriscaly solemn (He was called The Grump for a reason), but uncharacteriscaly grim and gray. He would not meet our eyes until he said "You need to listen, I am not kidding," The doctor waltzed into the room and handed me (Why me?) a piece of paper entitled Esophageal Cancer, with Stage IV circled, and underlined in bold was the words "Less than 1% survive in 5 years". Apparently the young doctor handed this to my father before we were in the room and thought it most appropriate to also hand me the same computerized print-out from the Mayo clinic. He said, "Your father has a very large mass in his esophagus that is cancer. As you can see, the odds are not good, in fact they are non existent. He will die." And then he walked out the room. I didn't feel. I didn't think. I watched. I watched my father witness his grave service. I watched my mom witness pre-widowhood. I watched my brother thinking the situation was all about his life. I watched my aunt cry her eyes out, experiencing my father's death despite his life still in existence. I watched. Yet, I wasn't watched back. Game plan time. My father's regular physician ran into the room, negating everything and anything the prior doctor described. Claiming my dad's cancer was "treatable, treatable", and soon gave us the plan: First, a PET scan to identify the staging. Then he WILL have major thoracic surgery to completely remove all of his esophagus and upper stomach. Then chemo and radiation. Then happily ever after. PET Scan showed my father was D.O.A. Stage IV esophageal cancer with major lymph involvement. The cancer is aggressive. It is also rare. When people say pancreatic cancer is bad, then they have never witnessed esophageal. I would rather have pancreatic cancer than esophageal, and I will fight anyone who says differently. The lymph that surrounded my dad's upper esophagus, trachea, lower lung, liver, stomach, upper small intestine, pancreas, and one of his ribs was filtrated with the cancer. Prior to this, for 2 months my dad thought he had an ulcer, and not one of his physicians ordered any CT scans. Thinking it would "go away". It didn't, but my dad dropped 26 pounds in 6 weeks. So something went away. My father met with a surgeon shortly thereafter. My dad never got the surgery because he was not a surgical candidate. So, then it was going to be about chemo and radiation. My father was diagnosed on Aug 29 with cancer....he didn't begin his daily chemo and radiation until October 12. Why the wait? His wife, the widow, and his daughter also would like to know the answer. The answer. He was d*cked around. Prior to his chemo, my father wrote me a letter that he tucked away. Squaring our 7 years of estrangement. He handed me the letter, I didn't read it. I put it away. My job was to be his nurse and to care for him 24/7 and I couldn't do that if I was to also examine the absence, the emotional lability and the lack of a father I had in my life. So I pushed it away. My father died on Thanksgiving night, 10:30 pm. 2008. He had a terrible death. Somehow, he aspirated on his feeding tube and the feeding went into his lungs. I visited him that morning when he couldn't breathe. His nurse would not get respiratory in the room. I was almost arrested trying to save my dad's life. Finally RT came in the room and helped him. I had to leave. 5 hours later I received a call saying my dad went into respiratory failure, he was intubated in a coma in the ICU. My dad never regained consciousness. When my mom and I visited him that night, he tried to awake. He attempted to sit up (he was restrained in a Posey jacket), and he tried to get our attention right as we left for the night, thinking he would "wake up" in the morning. On Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving morning, 7:21 am. His doctor in the ICU calls and asks us to get to the ICU pronto. He made a turn for the worse. His blood pressure significantly dropped, and they had already given him the maximum amount of drugs they could give in a 24 hour period. My dad was unarousable. He was on a ventilator. He had no urine output. His kidneys failed. His skin was turning yellow from liver failure. His heart was pumping, poorly. He had no brain function, other than brainstem. He was in a vegetative state. As a family, we made the decision to disconnect my father from artificial life support and he died extremely soon after that, within 15 minutes. 6 months after his death, my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer, which claimed her mother's early death in 1986. So now here I am, June 2009 dealing with the same illness that took my father's life in Nov 2008. They resected part of my mom's colon and she went through 6 months of chemotherapy. During her stint of chemo, her son let her know what a lousy mother she was to him and how she screwed her children up. My mom found out 3 months ago, her cancer spread to her lung and she is about to undergo surgery to remove the cancer in her lung. So when I say that myself and cancer aren't on speaking terms, I kind of mean it. When I say that I want it to be my life, and not the life of my father, and definately not the life of my mother, I kind of mean it. When I say that, because of cancer I lost all ability to find the good in life, to find the joy in life, to find faith in life; I kind of mean it. But what I have found is my ability to write even through the darknest night of my life, and through the foggiest day. Cancer can take my father and it can try to take my mother, but it can't take away my words.  |
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