Is this an age thing? I guess, but it feels weird how cancer has got to be like this fuckup but inevitable family member that I'm always having to think about and ask about. My father is doing really well, from all metrics. It looks like his treatment may be winding up with a great prognosis, which is all I could have asked for.
And about two weeks after getting that news, the F-word's lovely stepfather has told us he's got it all over. Last year his medical team found what they thought was a contained, if malignant, tumour in one of his kidneys, so, out came the kidney, but in, apparently, stayed the cancer.
I am tweaking about him in the same angrily political sense I tweaked about my father having to spend three hours a day travelling to his radiation appointments for months - furious over substandard regional resources and care in Australian, Canadian, etc., public healthcare systems. And my brain is doing a really great job focusing on that whole "one thing at a time" thing of "what can we do from here?" It is doing a great job of not imagining how my stepfather in law is actually feeling. It's doing an amazing job of ignoring mortality in general.
One thing it is not able to do, however, maybe because I've watched Blade Runner whilst high a few too many times (if such a thing is possible), maybe because my stepfather-in-law and I both got upset about David Bowie dying and it's so easy to imagine him, a gay working-class Catholic Irish kid in Buttfuck Nowhere Australia listening to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust when it first came out, seeing that skinny ginger freak on his television screen, and it being some sort of transcendent experience - anyways, my brain has been having a hard time not having these two things on constant repeat all day:
And about two weeks after getting that news, the F-word's lovely stepfather has told us he's got it all over. Last year his medical team found what they thought was a contained, if malignant, tumour in one of his kidneys, so, out came the kidney, but in, apparently, stayed the cancer.
I am tweaking about him in the same angrily political sense I tweaked about my father having to spend three hours a day travelling to his radiation appointments for months - furious over substandard regional resources and care in Australian, Canadian, etc., public healthcare systems. And my brain is doing a really great job focusing on that whole "one thing at a time" thing of "what can we do from here?" It is doing a great job of not imagining how my stepfather in law is actually feeling. It's doing an amazing job of ignoring mortality in general.
One thing it is not able to do, however, maybe because I've watched Blade Runner whilst high a few too many times (if such a thing is possible), maybe because my stepfather-in-law and I both got upset about David Bowie dying and it's so easy to imagine him, a gay working-class Catholic Irish kid in Buttfuck Nowhere Australia listening to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust when it first came out, seeing that skinny ginger freak on his television screen, and it being some sort of transcendent experience - anyways, my brain has been having a hard time not having these two things on constant repeat all day:
4 commenti:
I've come to the conclusion that it's just a life thing.
My youngest son's girlfriend is 16 and is on the 'maintenance chemotherapy' phase of her treatment for leukaemia.
My Dad has a 'new' cancer for which he'll have surgery next week.
The first person I loved to die from cancer was my Irish Gran. She was 58. I was 12. Just the right age for it to hurt hard.
Then it was my school and Uni pal, the very pale-skinned Sheena. Dead of melanoma that metastasized to her spine and brain by the time she was 25.
Th next time it was an older friend - diagnosed with a brain tumour and dead within 5 weeks. That was 24 years ago.
All the brutal and fatalistic sayings my Mum comforts us (and herself) with sound increasingly profound to me.
'We all have to die of something'
'Nowt more certain than death and taxes'
'Only the lucky die old'
'don't fear ageing - the alternative's death'
'seize the day'
'life is short'
There's more. So many. Maybe we are a morbid lot.
I am sorry about F-word's stepfather. He sounds like he's a good guy.
Wow. That is an awful lot of it.
How is your dad doing?
Meant to say - my Dad is ok. We've been doing the black humour stuff re the plastic surgery he'll likely need - he prefers that to us moping and looking hellish worried.
My Mental Health Nurse son (he's in his 2nd year of his bachelor of nursing degree) is going to drive my Dad to the hospital tomorrow.
Dad will be 75 on the 31st October. I think he's been giving himself the 'I've had a good life' internal talk... he's defo sanguine about it all now. And maybe that's the only way.
He's a little younger than my dad, who has been brilliantly calm and philosophic about the whole treatment deal in a similar way. Except when he complains about the hot flashes. Poor fella. I'm glad the summer is winding down. The hot weather has been as lousy for him as for me and my beached-whaleness.
Posta un commento