Friendship 2

My father is not poor.  Nor is he a ideological minimalist.  Yet, he and his wife have little furniture.  They simply cannot make decisions.

They have some hand-me-down IKEA chairs from a friend who moved across the country - you know the ones with the flat wood arms and the matching footstool… they rock a little… yeah, those.  And, that’s pretty much all they have in their living room, besides my father’s assorted musical instruments and an overflowing bookcase.  Their apartment looks more like a college dorm room than the living space of 50-something year old adults.  Even their TV stand is nothing more than a glorified stack of milk crates.

They moved in about three years ago and are still trying to find just the right couch.  In the meantime, if they have company, we all pretty much stand around or take turns sitting on the handful of uncomfortable chairs.

When my brother and I found out that Dad would be having chemo, we found a couch to buy him.  It wasn’t cheap and neither my brother nor I had oodles of extra cash lying around, but we figured the chemo would make him feel crappy and it would be nice to have a cozy couch to rest upon. 

Prior to giving the couch company my credit card number, I had to designate a delivery time.  Since Dad and I live 40 miles apart, I had to call him to make sure he’d be home when the delivery truck arrived.  He actually got angry at me for taking it upon myself to buy him a couch.  He insisted I cancel the order.  No matter how much I pleaded, begging him to just accept it so I would know he’d be comfortable, he insisted I not insult him by buying him a couch.  “What if I don’t like it?” he said.  “I don’t care if you like it,” I replied. ”Anything is better than those uncomfortable chairs.  If you hate it, you can throw it away when you find one you prefer.  Just keep it until you find something better.”

But no.  He wouldn’t have it.

So, here we are, 2 years later, and the man is incapacitated with insufferable bone pain and he’s got nowhere to sit besides those horrible chairs.  You’d think his wife would spring for a couch – any damn couch -  but that would necessitate her reaching into her pocket, and that simply never happens.  The woman still accepts cab money from my 90-year old destitute grandmother, even though they are still getting my father’s full salary every week.  That situation could be a whole other post.

But, while I was there on Saturday, his friend John showed up.  John is a NYC cop and he’s got the accent, physique, and attitude to prove it.  To put it bluntly, John gets shit done.  Period.  Apparently, John had been to visit my dad on Friday as well and saw him suffering in that stupid IKEA chair.  Without a word, John went over to my father’s computer, click-click-click, and next thing you know, a La-Z-Boy recliner is on the way to be delivered in 24 hours.  Done. 

While I was there on Saturday, the huge, cushy recliner was delivered.  John made sure they set it up properly, tipped the driver, hugged my unconscious father and left.

Now we all know that cops are underpaid, especially considering the riskiness of their profession.  I also know that I have lots of friends who have lots of money and have known me for as long as memory serves, and yet they only bought me a $30 baby shower gift.  These are supposed to be my best friends. 

John, on the other hand, was more like a good acquaintance of my dad’s.  I never even met him prior to this Saturday, and I’ve met mostly all of my dad’s friends and co-workers over the years.  But, in my father’s time of need, John has been an angel.  He calls to check on him everyday.  He shuttles him back and forth to the doctor or hospital whenever they need him.  And, he still manages to work and give time to his wife and kids. 

It brought tears to my eyes to see the satisfaction in John’s face when my dad woke from his stupor for a split second and said, “Wow.  That’s a chair!”  I am so impressed by the way John just took the bull by the horns without permission or consensus.  He thought it was the right thing to do, so he did it… that’s a tough guy with a kind heart.

We should all be lucky enough to have a selfless friend like John.

Friendship 1

I spent Saturday with my dad.  Or, at least I spent the day looking at him while he was in a methadone-induced stupor.  He’s lost some more weight, and he was having a particularly rough day because he was up all night with constipation so bad that an emergency hospice nurse rushed over after midnight to help “break up the mass” he was trying to pass and then administer an enema to prevent a repeat scenario.  Poor thing.

To make matters worse, my dad’s best friend Tommy was visiting from out of town.  Tommy’s retired and drove cross-country from Washington state to visit with my dad In NY.  All this constipation stuff happened while Tommy was there, which is lucky for my step-mother because she had help, but humiliating for my father who had to go through people poking and prodding his anus in front of his best friend.  Once the nurse left, the situation got even worse because of leakage and all sorts of other fecal horrors involving Tommy and my step-mother carrying my dad back and forth between the bedroom and bathroom.  By the time I arrived the next morning, there were two Hefty bags full of “soiled” clothes, sheets, towels, and bathroom rugs needing to get to a laundromat (or an incinerator, if I was in charge).

Tommy, a 3-time Vietnam vet, was unphased by it;  matter-of-fact in his retelling of the night’s events, steady in the way he helped my dad without thinking much of it.  I was thankful for him, impressed by him, and wondering if I had a single friend I could lean on like that.

Prostate Cancer Support Group

Misery loves company, so they say.  That’s why support groups are so popular.  Those people UNDERSTAND the whole gamut of emotions you’re going through because they are going through them too, or they have been there, done that.

If you’re looking for a forum that deals specifically with Prostate Cancer, check out Us Too.

 

Telling and Retelling the Story

At this sad time, I am thoroughly thankful for the outpouring of love and support I’ve received from friends, family, friends of family, colleagues, and neighbors.  It’s touching to know that so many people are thinking of us and keeping us in their prayers.

But, I have to admit, it is exhausting to tell the same story over and over and over again each time someone asks, “How’s your dad?”  It’s like reopening a wound each time it starts to scab.

I have begun being vague and simply answering, “Bad.  Really bad,” rather than launching into all the gory details (that I instead share here). 

The truth is, I know they don’t really want to hear the horrific things that are happening to him.  It makes people uncomfortable.  We’ve all been there.  You care.  You want to help.  You want to express concern.  But, nothing you say or do will change anything, and so you suffer through the awkward moment when you’re receiving the answer to the question you’re obligated to ask. 

I’ve decided to spare them all the drama.  “Bad.  Really bad,” seems to suffice.  They still sigh, grimace, or hug me.  They still say they’re sorry to hear about it.  They are truly concerned, and I love them for it.  I love them enough to keep it quick and succinct. 

Because after all, when your father has terminal cancer and is more unconscious than he is coherent, is there any other way to really describe it other than, “Bad.  Really Bad”?

 

Alternative Cancer Treatment Info Site

One of the most informative [but least organized] sites I’ve found along the way is www.cancertutor.com.  If you or your loved one is at all open to considering alternative treatments rather than, in tandem with, or after the failure of conventional “Western” medicine, check it out. 

You’ll have to dig deep through this info-rich site, but its lack of structure is made up for by its breadth of substance.

Methadone = Crack

Ever visit a nursing home and see the vacuous stares of the elderly stricken with Alzheimer’s?  I distinctly remember visiting my 92 year old step-grandmother at one of the “nicer” facilities on Long Island and being shocked by the sea of wheelchairs and doped up geriatrics filling the rec room.  Each one was different: each one was equally sad. 

One man cried out for his mother.  Another woman spoke gibberish – pieces and parts of words that might mix into cohesive speech if they were arranged differently.  There was one lady who just sat with a laundry basket on her lap, folding and unfolding the clothes endlessly.  Another tiny black woman rocked a baby-doll as if it were a real child.  I couldn’t help but think that I’d rather be dead than where they were.

My latest visit with my dad had me thinking the same thing.  The methadone they have him on had him babbling and hallucinating.  At one point, we couldn’t seem to rouse him after he had dozed off.  After nearly 10 minutes of shaking him and patting his face, we finally got a response… I thought for sure, that was it.  But, he bounced back into consciousness… sort of.

The methadone makes him vomit.  Like all heroin products (natural or synthetic) it makes you puke.  So, they gave him some other stuff to prevent the vomiting, but it doesn’t help too much.  Additionally, the methadone makes him twitchy… like a crack addict.  His fingers twitch like he’s trying to point to something, his jaw twitches like he’s trying to speak but can’t get bodily cooperation, and he jumps in his sleep quite a lot.  It would all be worth it (almost) if the pain was gone.  But, it’s not.  On a scale of 1 – 10, his pain at rest is still a 4; in motion, it’s a 7. 

He told us he had to use the bathroom, so we tried to get him out of bed, but there’s no place to grab or push or pull him that doesn’t cause excruciating pain.  His shoulders, hips, and ribs are covered with cancer, so transitioning from a sitting to standing position (or vice versa) is torture.  It even hurts him when we hug him.  Talk about heartbreaking.

He has 300 pills of methadone in a pharmacy bottle.  If I was him, during my 5 minutes of lucidity every 2 hours, I’d reach over and down the entire bottle.  Where’s Dr. Kevorkian when you need him?

 

Where Do I Begin?

My father is dying.

He’s not yet 59, and has lived a life full of regret.  And watching him dissolve into a pale, withered shell of himself is stirring up a firestorm of emotion in my gut, the front-runner of which is pity.

He’s been locked in a losing battle with metastatic prostate cancer for over two years now.  His is a rare, unrelenting, aggressive strain that has grown and spread through his body faster than kudzu vines on magnolia trees.  Had his urologist biopsied him any one of the four times my father had gone to him complaining of back pain and blood in the urine… had the doctor recognized that the small upticks of my father’s PSA level from 1.2 to 1.4 to 2.2 to 3.1 weren’t really small considering they were occurring in just one year’s time… my dad may have had a chance.  Instead, my dad was lulled into a false sense of calm with his doctor saying, “You just have a bad infection. Cancer doesn’t grow that quickly,” and given four rounds of increasingly strong, yet futile, antibiotics. By the time my father’s new wife of [at that point] six months rushed him to the Emergency Room because of intense lower back pain, he was, as the resident put it,  ”full of cancer”. 

Prostate cancer is usually a slow-grower, occurring in men over 50.  The reason it grows slowly is because it feeds on testosterone, a hormone whose production peaks at age 18 and falls off year after year as a man ages.  Usually, men with prostate cancer die of something else before the cancer gets them. 

As with most cancers, early detection goes a long way toward survival.  Since the prostate is in a small sack, finding cancerous cells early can usually  help prevent them from getting loose outside the sack.  It’s when the cancer cells go unchecked and have time to eat through the sack that you have to worry: this is what they call metastasizing. 

For whatever reason, cancer that begins in the prostate and spreads elsewhere is still called prostate cancer no matter where the lesions occur and whether or not it still exists at its point of origination.  Prostate cancer, once metastatic and on the move throughout the body, usually gets a foothold on the surface of the skeleton.  These lesions, over time, become excruciatingly painful, especially along ball & socket bones/joints such as the hip or shoulder since these bones, and hence the lesions, must grind as they articulate the limbs. 

My father’s cancer is covering most of his bones at this point.  The pain is unbearable without serious amounts of narcotics (like morphine), and there is a very fine line between pain managment and coherence.  A few milligrams one way or the other and he can be wide awake, alert and in incredible pain, or he can be a pain-free zombie.

As I have been coming to terms with what is happening to my dad, I have read volumes of books on diets, treatments, and stories from the trenches.  In speaking with friends and colleagues, so many… too many… of us have loved ones stricken with cancer in one form or another.  I lost my grandmother 3 years ago from cancer.  My other grandmother has been through chemo/radiation twice.  My aunt had cancer.  My cousin had cancer.  My best friend’s college roommate died of cancer.  Two of my college friends died from cancer before they were 30.  I could go on.  My point is that CANCER IS EVERYWHERE.   If it hasn’t yet touched your life, you’re lucky.  But, it will.

So, I thought this would be a good forum not just for cancer “survivors” in the traditional sense of having beaten the odds and beaten the disease personally, but for those of us who are cancer’s collateral damage - the children, grandchildren, wives, husbands, friends, lovers, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and acquaintences of people facing down their own mortality.  Our bodies may not be battling the disease, but our hearts and souls are as we watch, helplessly, as the people we love go through the battle of their life, and often, their death.  

This is for us.