I [Heart] My Life

Mid-August Update on My Dad: 5 Months Since Diagnosis

This is a necessary post, and yet it is one I don't want to write. I need to let my dad's community know that his condition is worsening. I keep hoping the bad days are a fluke, an anomaly, but unfortunately, the more he has and the longer they are drawn out, I'm being forced to painfully see the writing on the wall: something is shifting. Without a crystal ball, we can't know for sure if the pain and fatigue and weight loss are from the cancer itself, or the chemo fighting the cancer. In lieu of a crystal ball, he's going in for a CT scan this afternoon. Hopefully that will give some clues as to what is going on.

Simply put, he's spending more days resting. Sometimes on the couch, sometimes in the recliner, sometimes in bed. This man who very rarely took a sick day, who could always be found in the Christmas Trees or the apple orchard or cutting firewood, is now spending a lot of his time lying down. The pain he's experiencing is in his abdomen, and seems to feel a bit better if he is stretched out flat.

Fortunately, a couple weeks ago, after a particularly difficult week, he was able to go visit my youngest brother, Kyle, in Oregon. To see Kyle and Whitney's new stomping grounds since their move from Montana.

The trip was tentative until the very last second. I literally wasn't sure he was going to make it until I actually saw him board the plane (I was able to get a security pass and accompany him to the gate, which was awesome!). I felt as though I was passing the baton to Kyle in that moment.

We've got our fingers crossed he can make a similar trip to Dale's house later this month.

The main message I'm needing to convey is this: Something has changed in his body, and he might be entering what he calls "the next phase" of this illness. Till now it was difficult on the chemo weeks, but by the weekend he was feeling better, and then would go on to have a good non-chemo week. Then, the weekends after chemo started feeling more like the days following chemo. And now he isn't getting that good non-chemo week. If anything, the shift has been toward the non-chemo week before more painful than the crummy chemo week. Good days are becoming the anomaly.

Take away: He appreciates the calls and the visits, still. However, if you call you are likely to get the answering machine, and it may be awhile before he feels up for calling you back. And if you come to visit (to get some of the wonderful Granvensteins that are now ripe!), he'll greet you if he feels up for it, but there is a 50/50 chance he'll be unable to be social.

Please continue to keep him in your thoughts.

Thank you to everyone who's been sporting the purple "pancreatic cancer awareness" bracelets. It's been so fun getting requests, sending them out, and then seeing your pictures. I've mailed out 56 bracelets to date (and still have 5 sitting on my desk -- who wants them?!). Keep the photos coming! Here's a sampling of bracelets out in the world, helping to remind my dad that No One Fights Alone:

And the guy for whom we wear the purple also wears his, every single minute of every single day:

We love you, Dad!!

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Thoughts on Suicide The Morning After

I didn't know Robin Williams any more than we can know an actor from his films and interviews. We think we know them because they've touched us, but we don't. I have no little personal story of running into him in the Bay Area (though I always felt a little inexplicable pride that he lived here, too).

Nor do I know his three children. And yet, I think I know a little bit of what they may be feeling this morning, as the sun begins to rise the first day after their father has departed this planet. Their first day waking up to a world that is absent this one, big person. Their first time waking up with a father-sized hole in their hearts.

...

Eight years ago, early one morning, the phone rang. It was the beginning of the second day of my lazy honeymoon vacation. The sun was just starting to slice through the blinds on the windows, making patterns on the wall behind the bed. The ring jolted me out of sleep.

It was my brother calling to tell me our mother was dead. Dead by her own hand, a single gunshot to the head. She had died in our home, in room that had once been my bedroom so many years before, and had later become a make-shift office. My father was in the living room. She was 49. I was 29.

Loosing someone to suicide is sudden and shocking, and yet in so many ways it has been a long time coming, not unlike a chronic illness.

My mother had suffered from depression and a personality disorder my whole life. Probably her whole life. It was something she battled every single day through exercise, diet, journaling, medication, therapy. She tried everything, and sometimes she tried nothing. Sometimes she couldn't get out of bed for days, weeks, or months. Sometimes she was so happy: so full of energy and kid-like mischief, a twinkle in her eye, a laugh escaping her lips. And sometimes she was consumed by the demons in her head. Sometimes she was so incredibly angry. Angry, paranoid, suspicious, scared. Tears streaking her mascara down her cheeks, face red, eyes flashing one minute and so, so dull and flat the next. Sometimes she hugged and needed to be hugged. Sometimes she was striking anything, anyone, within arm's distance.

Her illness was a wall around her. Most of the time she was so alone. As a child, and even as an adult, I kept my distance, scared. A lot of people thought they knew her, but mostly they knew the persona she created. She was a master of making people see what they wanted to see. An avid bicycler, a talented painter and seamstress, a versital cook, an animal-lover. She was all these things. But at home, her defenses were down, in a puddle at her feet like a dress gratefully -- finally! -- slipped off. And then the depression engulfed her.

After she died, people wanted to comfort me and my brothers. She'll always be in your heart! She loved you so much! She was so proud of you!

But the feelings that come after a person dies by their own choice are mixed and confusing. Traditional grief counseling, as I learned, doesn't cut it. This was not a person who died white-haired after a long, well-lived life. This was not a person who died in a hospital bed after a well-known fight with a body-ravaging illness. This was a person who woke up one day and said, Enough is enough. I can't do this anymore. I'm done.

I felt sad, angry, abandoned, bewildered. But there were also emotions that filled me with guilt: Understanding and relief (for her and for me). She didn't have to suffer anymore. She didn't have to be so angry or tired anymore. She couldn't hurt me anymore. She could simply stop working so incredibly hard to stay alive. The Big Quiet called to her, and she went.

If I could -- if she'd let me -- I'd hug her one last time and tell her, It's ok. I'll be ok. Rest now.

 

Rest in peace, Grete.

 

 May you have peace, Robin. (Source: Instagram @therobinwilliams)

PS. Depression is very hard to describe. I've battled it a bit myself, mostly as a teen, and know the tantalizing call of the Big Quiet. The best description I've ever read of what depression feels like is here. Please read it. I highly recommend it.