Raining Down A Hail of Bullets

On my last bullet point post, Biting The Bullet, I started with the wind sock (stuck in the gutter) and ended with the idea that I wanted to be like wind sock when it is flowing free and fulfilling its nature. I linked that old post if you are interested in my idea of metaphor. (Hint: It is a rambling post that SEEMS to go nowhere and then doubles back and actually finds a point.)

Let's try it again.

• The wind sock is once again hopelessly caught in the gutter.
• I would snap a photo, but I already did that once and, seriously, how many photos of a wind sock in a gutter does a person need to see?
• I finished reading the book The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green, a little over a week ago. 
• Yes, there is a movie based on the book at the movies. I have yet to see the movie, but I laughed and then cried through the book. Since I know how it ends, I think I will save it for home viewing. As much I love sobbing at the movies, I will take a pass.
• I don't think this is any sort of spoiler alert, but the teenage characters in the book (and movie) have cancer. The boy, Augustus Waters, is a huge fan of metaphor. His constancy in looking for it in everything around him made me fall in love with him just a bit more than I expected.

• Okay, it is a little creepy saying that I fell in love with Augustus Waters and then SEEING Augustus Waters. He is a teenager. It was a whole lot cooler when he was just a character in a book.
• But, I still love that metaphor clip. It was exactly the way John Green wrote it. So, maybe it is HIM I fell in love with just a little bit. That is slightly less creepy given that he is closer to my age, but married.
• Let's move on...
• So, I read this book about cancer and had a bit of a breakdown. I did mention the crying, right?
• One of my friends from high school has been battling cancer since his 20s. I thought constant, chronic migraines were a bitter pill. Lest you ever forget... there is ALWAYS someone who has it worse than you do.
• So, anyway, he posts these horribly long (and dreadfully sobering) updates on his Facebook page. The cancer is slowly becoming him. As it is in his brain, spine, lymph nodes, legs, and now pelvis. The fact that the guy lived this long is a miracle in itself. The treatment stopped working a while ago and he has decided No More. So, now it is just a waiting game. 
• I told you about my friend from high school whose son died of cancer. Well, I mentioned it. I didn't really go into it. That was last December. I feel surrounded by cancer.
• A friend from college just announced that her teenage daughter has been diagnosed with osteoscarcoma (bone cancer), which is the same cancer Augustus Waters had in The Fault In Our Stars.
• Since I just read that book I know a whole lot more about osteoscarcoma than I did a week ago. 80% of people beat it. That is a great statistic unless you fall in the 20%. I have debated sending my friend an email to NOT read this book or watch this movie.
• Yesterday I just had tissue biopsied to determine if I have cancer. Isn't that exciting? I could be the next person on Facebook to create a page that is devoted to cancer!!!!
• Before you get too excited, the doctor who performed the biopsy took me aside after and said that it was unlikely (though not certain) that I had cancer. He had seen cancerous tissue many times when it was OBVIOUSLY cancer and mine wasn't. 
• So, for right now, I am riding on the good side of the stats. Of course, he was less than thrilled about everyone on my father's side of the family dying of colon cancer. Well, not the young people (as in my age or younger) yet. He made sure that we had a sobering talk on the importance of colonoscopies. I assured him that I am well aware.
• I am well aware.
• I am currently reading George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Now, that is a tome. And it is the first of a series. The first book tops 800 pages. 
• I watched the first three seasons of the TV show that follows the book and am glad I did. It makes the book much easier reading.
• Spoiler alert: No one dies of cancer in Game of Thrones. No one lives long enough to die of cancer. They live in a medieval time and are much more likely to be run through with a sword, battle axe, or one of those wicked spiked balls that warriors like to throw around.
• As I read it, I find myself pondering the bigger issues of holding to honor and valor and honesty when lying, corruption, and deceit seem to repeatedly win the day. I think on how things are going down in George R.R. Martin's fictional world and then take a look at how things are going down right here... and it all seems frightfully the same. The surest way to lose the game is to fight it honorably and the surest way to win it is with cunning and deception.
• And that brings me back to the wind sock. You knew we were coming back to the wind sock...
• All the wind sock desires is to blow free and fulfill its Nature. That is its greatest happiness. 
• Yet it remains glued to the gutter. And so it shall be until I walk out there and give it another good yank. 
• Is it our destiny, like that of the wind sock, to constantly return to the gutter and consistently require a good yank from an outside source to set us right again?

This might not look like grief. It is.

There are certain truths that are becoming self evident to me. We know things theoretically, but we don't really know them until they happen to us. So, there is knowing and there is knowing. For instance, we all know that everyone dies eventually. All of my grandparents have passed. They all lived lived into their 80s. I wish that I could say that they all lived with their minds and bodies intact, but that would not be true. Funny how you often get one or the other, but not both. That was not a ha ha funny, btw. I even had a great grandparent live until I was in my 20s. By the time that each of them went, it was a blessing. They all had senile dementia and didn't know what was what. That is no way to live and I could tell it was frightening not knowing who anyone in their world was. They felt alone and frightened. Every now and then they got a good day and recognized family when they saw you. They might not be able to place exactly who you were in the scheme of things, but they knew you on some level. Those days were rare. When someone passes after years of that, we call it a blessing because it is a blessing for everyone. It has been painful all the way around.

On my dad's side, my aunt died of colon cancer that spread through her body and she was in a lot of pain. Her passing was a blessing simply because it was such a painful way to go. My father's mother had some senile dementia going on and her cancer, by the time they caught it was all through her body. However, they think it started in her colon. Yeah, I think I probably said this before.

For those of you who have been reading this here blog for a while might remember how shocked I was that my dad's memory has shorted out on him so much. This was a discovery that was made in April or so of last year when we went on a family vacation. We were telling stories and such, and my dad just didn't remember stuff. Huge chunks of his memory were just gone. It seemed to be completely random. Other stuff totally intact. If you want to picture his brain like a computer, just imagine a whole bunch of wires pulled out. Those wires represent memories. And they seemed to be pulled out at random. No rhyme. No reason. And no real way for anyone to know what he remembered and what he didn't. For instance, it never occurred to me that he forgot that his sister and mother died of colon cancer, and that he needed to be on top of that. Or that my brother wasn't aware of it and not paying better attention as the person who lives closest to my dad.

Anyway, let's get on with what is. The biopsy came back Stage 4. I think they cat scanned him to determine how far the cancer had spread. Though it could have been an MRI or PET scan. I am really not sure what scanning system they used. His gastric area is laden with cancer. It is all through his colon, into his intestines, and liver. There was a spot on his lung that might or might not be cancer. In any event, with Stage 4 cancer that has spread as much as his spread, they are giving him 4-9 months. It is amazing how great Medicare is when they know that they only have to take care of you for a limited time. They really monkey up everything and are happy to do so. Care with a smile.

Fortunately my brother and sister-in-law just redid their downstairs in anticipation of taking care of her parents. My brother went out Tuesday night to get my dad his hospital bed and table. Thank you Medicare. Hospice has a nurse who will come out twice a week to check on him and make sure he doing well. Help him with anything he needs and make sure he is getting the right amount of pain meds. In a terminal patient they do not worry about addiction. It all about making sure that the patient does not suffer. Hospice also will have an aide come out two days a week. I think that person is there primarily to help him with his hygienic needs. Showering. Shaving. Changing the sheets on his bed. That sort of thing. I will know more once it all gets into a groove. The doctor may come out periodically to check on him, too. The team meets once a month to discuss all of their patients in hospice care, so I imagine everyone tries to be "in the loop."

In about a week, my father will have the better, "permanent," colostomy bag that is easy to replace the bag and has snaps. Right now, it is the biggest thorn in his side. They have to use adhesive tape to keep it in place and it doesn't always hold real well. Blah blah blah. The other problem is that my dad feels gassy whenever he stands up. I think it might be because he has a tumor pressing on a nerve in his colon. They didn't remove any of the tumors and some were fairly sizable. So, every time he stands he feels the need to go to the bathroom, but he can't. It is an uncomfortable pressure. However, in terms of his pain, my brother says he is doing really well. Surprisingly well.

The other thing is that apparently this has been a problem for a long time. Every time he stood up, he felt this pressure, so he walked hunched over, etc. Anyway, he has pretty well lost all of his muscle tone and is down to 135 pounds. He is 6 feet tall. Yeah, everyone in our family is freaking wasting away! My brother is down to 150 and is just as tall as my dad. Of course, the difference is that he is working a manual labor job right now and he is solid muscle. I swear that he has the fastest metabolism in the world! *sigh*

Anyway, I talked to my brother about the best way to manage a visit and suggested that we stay in dad's apartment since he had a full house. He was going to let the apartment go at the end of this month, but was more than willing to pay one more month rent if we came up in March. His house is full to the brim! So, that is what we are doing. I moved all of my doctor's appts to this week. He went over and cleaned up over there this weekend. He is going to get a friend to help him move the "stinky" stuff out before we get there. And mom and I bringing up one inflatable bed to sleep on. She left another inflatable bed at my brother's for when she visits and he will bring that over. So we will each have our own bed and room. We will probably stay for two week or so.

And I am hoping that my brother and my dad talk again about the C-Staten vitamin therapy. One of the things that I hate the most about this whole thing is being so FAR from the situation. I feel like I have to input on anything. No control over anything. It is very frustrating. Perhaps most frustrating of all is that I would like to stay longer than two weeks, and I think that my brother and sister-in-law would be happier if I stayed a week. I could be wrong about that. However, it isn't up to them. Chances are reasonable that this is the last time I will see my dad alive, and I think that if I want to stay right up until March 31, they should encourage me to do so. If the roles were reversed, I would do that for them. But, hey, that's just me.

Cancer is a Thief.

This is going to be short because I don't have the strength to make it long.

My aunt died from colon cancer. I am pretty sure that my paternal grandmother's cancer started in her colon and spread from there. So, when I found out that my father voluntarily admitted himself to the hospital for gastro-intestinal issues, my red flags were up. He was supposed to have a colonoscopy a few months ago that went awry because that stuff that you drink kept him on the toilet for days. He literally couldn't make his appointment because he had the runs for days. No, he didn't reschedule. Sigh.

So, I made sure to relay all of this to my brother who lives close by so that they could get a handle on this, because I wanted to make sure that they checked his colon out thoroughly while he was there. Turns out that thoroughly wasn't even necessary. In order, to get him "unclogged" they had to do a coloscopy (or something like that) and, in short order, found a very large mass. It was the source of the problem. They sent a portion of it in for biopsy, drained the rest, and hooked him to the bag. You know the bag? The one that saves you those trips to the bathroom.

While we were all hoping for a benign result, apparently the doctor took one look at that mass and knew it was NOT benign. My brother called last night confirming that it is cancer. They have yet to get a stage number on it, but they are talking hospice care vs. let's beat this cancer by doing this, this, and this. So, I am preparing myself for a 4 and anything else will be a blessing. They are also using words like "make him comfortable." Oh, and the bag isn't coming off. For my father, that is reason alone to depart this earth. I have no doubt that once you can't do your business on your own, the "game" is pretty much over. All that is left is wrapping up your business and saying your good-byes.

And, so here we are again, back to the lies we tell ourselves. In this case, it is the lie about time. We seem to think that there is a surplus of time. There will always be more time. Or that we know everyone dies, including our parents, we just don't want it to be today. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Next month. Next year. Truth be told, no one wants anyone else to die before them because the worst thing is the being left behind. Can't we just all go together? No, of course not. And we don't really want that either. Can't we just all die by going to sleep and never waking up? Lovely thought. No. The clock seems to have run out when I wasn't looking. Or is winding down.



My father was not a perfect man. However, when I was going the marriage from hell I found out that a lot of people just really didn't have enough love in their hearts for me or my situation. Two people who did ~ unwaveringly ~ were my parents. Unconditional love. That is what parents do. Love is a verb. I know that when my father dies his spirit will live on, but that support he gives me here in the present when I need it now. Not many people love you unconditionally, in my experience, and my heart is breaking for the loss of this one who has been a rock for me.