7:36pm September 16, 2014

Things are getting worse for my dad. Please don’t stress me out.

I knew this, but it’s confirmed now.

Please don’t make my life any harder than it has to be.  And please make allowances if I act out of character in some way.  I feel like I just got hit over the head with a sledgehammer, even after extra dexamethasone.  I can’t predict how I’m going to behave, or react to little things, or anything like that.  It could be that I hold everything together, it could be that I get explosive, I just don’t know right now, I don’t know anything right now.  It feels like I felt when I first got the news that he had cancer.

Just please try to be gentle and understanding.  Remember that adrenal insufficiency means stress puts me at risk.  Don’t do things to increase it if you can help yourself at all.  (I’ll understand if it’s accidental.  But if anyone starts bullying, I will not tolerate that.)

Fuck.

Basically the cancer is spreading, the chemo is not working as well as it should, he’s feeling like the chemo is too much wear on his system, and he’s going to keep going back for a few more sessions but after that he’s switching to hospice and they don’t expect him to live long at that point.  I guess there’s a chance he could have six months if some drug works perfectly, but that number sounds optimistic.  

They’ve talked about how at some point death will look more attractive (having been to that point, I would agree that this is a strong possibility, not just something they tell you because they assume it will happen).  But last I talked to him he’s not at that point yet – he said he feels sick but just the same as always… like when you’re chronically ill and you feel like the same person with the same will to live and just because you’re sick that will to live doesn’t automatically go away, even though people tend to expect it will.  But there’s also a point where your body can wear down so much that death feels like a welcome rest, and that’s natural too, as long as nobody is being forced to see their life that way (which also happens and is horrible).

All I can do is love him, and try to be there for him, and love him when I’m there for him, and love him when I’m not communicating with him, because I think love has a lot of power.  Not power to stop the cancer, but power to make the situation as good as it can be under the circumstances.  Love at that point is all that matters.

And don’t fuck with me.  Just don’t.  Among other things, the last thing I want is an adrenal-insufficiency health crisis of my own when people should be focusing on my father.  Last time I said something like that he said “I’m sick, I’m not the center of the universe.”  But still, I don’t want people to feel like they have to split their focus onto me when my father is definitely dying and my mother is more precariously ill than I’ve ever seen her.

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