Part 4, Cancer

Cancer is never something you want to hear even if you believe you are ready. Hearing confirmation of a cancer diagnosis is doubly troubling.  For some reason, hearing it for the second time after seeing my dad dwindle in size slammed it home for me, and it was earth-shattering. 

While my father was in the hospital, I read everything I could about stomach cancer. Everything I read was heart wrenching and horrific. I did not reveal what I read to my son or my father. Additionally, I could NOT go to my family with any of this news, that in itself is worthy of an entirely new blog post. 

So, here I am reading and becoming more and more depressed about the outcome. My takeaway was stomach cancer was pretty horrible. Now I have gone down this rabbit hole, gained all of this insight about cancer and, it has me reeling. 

I am a Program Manager by occupation; Therefore, I am usually the person figuring things out and holding things together. I was immediately out of my element because I knew I couldn’t figure this out, nor could I hold anything together. 

 Usually, I could go to my father when anything was troubling me or if I needed another opinion. This time I couldn’t because the troubling thing was his diagnosis.  So, I am in my apartment pacing around thinking, what am I going to do? I’m a strategic person by nature. I can usually figure out a strategy for just about anything. This time my mind was blank. I had no answers because cancer defies any and all possible strategies. So I just sat, wondering what I should do. 

My mind went back to the discussion I had with my dad after his first diagnosis. I asked if he wanted me to tell anyone in the family.  He said, “NO.” He continued stating that he didn’t want the family to behave as they’d behaved during my grandmother’s illness ten years previous. I had to respect that because I remember the behavior and I wouldn’t want that during my illness if I were in a similar situation. 

Although I did respect that, I now had to face these challenges all by myself. This was just the tip of the iceberg because I knew everything would continue to go downhill.

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