fashion clothes

Yesterday was World Cancer Day.

This past Sunday, as I was watching the Superbowl, a commercial for World Cancer Day, paid for by Chevrolet came on the screen. I fought back most of the tears but couldn't hold them all. What I wouldn't give for one more drive with my Dad. He was a car guy. He taught me to be a car girl. Some of the best times I had with him in those last weeks were on a drive.


I was with him the last time he sat in the driver's seat...
the last time he gripped the steering wheel...
the last time he felt the accelerator grab...
the last time he rolled the window down...
the last time he shut the door...

Last week, the Surgeon General released a comprehensive report on the use and danger of tobacco over the past 50 years. Since the first report was issued, more than 20 million people in the United States have died from tobacco related illnesses. Smoking continues to decline, sitting at 16% of the population today. There are more former smokers than current ones here in the US now.

A week before the report was issued, Eric Lawson became the fourth Marlboro Man to die a tobacco related death, succumbing to COPD caused by a three pack a day habit stretching back decades.

Tomorrow is my birthday. That morning in 2011, though he was getting weaker by the moment, my father announced that we were going to breakfast to celebrate. He was the one dying, I was the one having the birthday, and he told me that it all seemed wrong because I'd given him the gift that year by coming to help him at the end. Around the table that morning, him and I, my mother (also gone now, in part because of cigarettes), my brother, his wife, their son and my virtually adopted brother. I had no idea it would be the last time. I had no idea he'd be gone four days later.

February 10th will mark three years here without him. Without his wisdom, his guidance, his love. Three years since I have heard his voice, his laughter. Three years.

My father didn't saddle up and ride off into the sunset.

Neither did The Marlboro Men.

I don't care what the ads promised.

They lied.

My father, these ad men, thousands more each year, all their lives ended too soon, ended painfully.

Gasping for air.

Quite often still addicted to the very thing killing them.

For my Dad, it was lung cancer that spread to his blood, his bones, his liver...and then everywhere.

The Marlboro Man was invented in the mid 1950's, when smoking was advertised to every man, woman and child as something sexy, something desirable, something social. The Marlboro Man was created as an advertisement for Philip Morris in an attempt to sell Marlboros, which were filtered cigarettes and at the time, considered feminine. The reason they started pushing the filtered cigarettes was a simple one, really...they knew that cigarettes were dangerous, they just mistakenly believed that filtered ones were safer. 

The tobacco companies knew cigarettes were dangerous then in the 1950's. They knew it before they created this advertising icon. They knew it before they packaged it, distributed it and sold it. They knew it before they told an entire generation of men that the only way to truly be rugged, manly men was to do it with a piece of paper containing addiction and poison rolled up between their lips.

The executives knew cigarettes were addictive before smokers and their families started suing the tobacco companies. They suppressed documents, they escaped liability in countless lawsuits claiming that cigarettes were safe, that they did not cause cancer, that the smokers assumed the risk anyway.

How that all wasn't deconstructed just doesn't make sense to me. If there was nothing dangerous, what exactly could the smokers be assuming the risk of? The companies themselves said their products were safe.

And an entire generation of smokers believed them.

By the time smokers realized just how dangerous smoking was, they were addicted. Hooked. Nicotine is as addictive as heroin and cocaine.

And the tobacco companies knew.

And they denied it anyway.

They denied it because they made money from their lies. They became rich at the hands of people crippled by addiction to a product they vowed was safe. They profited from sickness, from death, because even in their last days, most smokers can't quit.

The companies weren't able to completely escape liability in later cases and have been forced to pay out billions of dollars to compensate states for health care costs.

That won't bring my father back.

Nothing will.

If I sound angry, it's because I am.

I want to go on another drive with my father.

I want to sit around a breakfast table one more time.

I want to hear his laugh, see his smile, just one more time.

Most of the time, I am a writer who vigorously advocates for others, who tries to raise awareness, who shares stories, who exposes injustices.

Sometimes I'm just a girl who misses her Dad. 



I love you, Dad.

I miss you every day that goes by.

I miss you more right now.

I'm not high.

Promise.

I've still never used marijuana. AND I LIVE IN COLORADO, YOU GUYS.

You know what though???

I love Taco Bell.

Love it.

I'm not in college anymore, though I have fond memories of being crammed with far too many people into far too small of a car to make late night runs...only to have us all wake up the following morning telling crazy ass stories about the dreams we had with bellies full of tacos.

I don't love it because the food is good, and certainly not because it's anything close to the authentic Mexican food that I grew up loving in Southern California - you know, the kind where you walk roll out of the restaurant having gained ten pounds. Ahhhh.

Let me just have this moment, you guys.  (I've been trapped in the land of green chile sauce for 9 years)

One of the great downsides to moving away from SoCal is that I moved away from places like that. It took us eight years to find a decent Mexican restaurant here and the honest truth is that my cooking is damn close to even that one decent restaurant.

Y'all haven't lived until you've had my beans. For serious.

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about Taco Bell, and it will be. I just needed to have my moment of culinary reflection.

The Bell.

Aside from being hella cheap, I love it. I especially love the Doritos Locos tacos with Fire sauce. Nom.

Most recently I found a reason to adore the Bell because my teeny tiny son, the one who has fallen off the growth chart on for weight a few times, discovered the crunchy Taco Bell taco. He loves the crunchy Taco Bell taco. I feel less guilty about letting him eat them as a parent since they have to put actual meat in there now instead of whatever the hell it was before.

Please don't tell me. I'd really rather not know.

My love of the Bell is longer standing than this recent adoration of the crunchy taco though. It goes back over fourteen years now.

You see, Taco Bell did something no other place could do.

It made my husband eat. It kept him from dropping too much weight too fast.

When he was diagnosed with cancer and learned that he would have to go through fairly intense radiation to his abdominal cavity, we knew right away that it was going to mess with his entire digestive system. He'd already started dropping weight, weight that he didn't really have to drop back then, and it was going to get worse in a hurry. The nurses gave me all kinds of weight boosting ideas, gave me coupons for nutritional drinks, I tried everything I could think of and he wouldn't touch any of it.

A few days in (radiation was daily), we adjusted to the fact that he'd have a one hour window every afternoon, right after his treatments. That was the only hour of the 24 that he'd be even close to hungry. And he wanted Taco Bell.

Specifically, he wanted bean burritos.

He ate one a day for the rest of the time he was in radiation, and most of those days it was the only thing he kept down. I didn't argue with him too much because I figured there were worse things in the world he could eat. It had protein and carbs and cheese, and most importantly, it sounded good to him and he kept it down.

It became so routine that the car just drove itself there every day and the employees started to anticipate when we'd be by.

Ten years later, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. The chemo was hell, the radiation on top of it made everything worse, but that glorious neon bell in the sky came to the rescue again.


He didn't want to eat much, but he craved Taco Bell.

We'd learned not to ask questions long before then.

When we were there to visit, every time we went out, I just brought some home. When I left to take care of him at the end, any trip I made out included a loop of the drive-through. I tend to support the theory that he had digestive fondness for it because when he first started his business and was broke as hell, the lab was right behind a Taco Bell.

Like the muscle memory of a well trained athlete, his body craved what it knew.

Or something like that.

I know it's fast food. I know that calling it food probably isn't entirely accurate. I know it's terrible. I know that the meat wasn't entirely meat for like ever. I know that the shells have GMO corn. I know all that.

I know. So please don't preach at me. I know.

And you know what?

I still freaking adore the place.

Always will.

I'm pretty sure that the food is laced with magic fairy dust....but I'm still not asking any questions.

January is Cervical Cancer Awareness Month.

Cervical cancer used to be the leading cause of cancer death in women. Thanks to better screening, detection and treatment, survival rates have increased dramatically. Each year in the US, about 12,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer, and approximately 4,000 die from it. Most cases of cervical cancer are caused by the HPV virus, a disease most frequently spread through sexual contact.

A while back now, my friend Emily confided something in me. She told me that she had cervical cancer and then waved her hand around dismissively about how she had to have surgery again but it was no big deal, right?

NBD. Uh huh.

I knew it was a big deal then, but I sensed that what she needed at that moment was a really inappropriate joke, so I said something naughty about her lady bits and we laughed. Turns out that I was right. It's been a long few years filled with a roller coaster of emotions for her. I asked if she would be willing to share her story here and she was kind enough to oblige.

I must warn you, though, she is my friend. So she's totally inappropriate. And candid. And honest. And real.

This is her story.

~~~~~~~~~~

While I was sitting in Starbucks waiting for her to come in, I realized that I hadn't written down a list of questions to ask her. I figured that it wouldn't much matter since the two of us rarely have a hard time finding things to talk about, and this time, we had a specific topic.

A serious one.

We usually tell each other fart jokes.

No, I'm not kidding.

She sat down and I could tell she was nervous. This isn't a story that she has told many people, not even really to me, not in much detail anyway. I told her that I was completely unprepared and didn't write any questions down. She winked and whispered, my vagina still works. Everyone always wants to know about that!

Tension broken.

Before we got to the story, she promised herself she wasn't going to cry, immediately teared up, then told me why she hadn't really told anyone. It's a reason I completely understand.

She didn't tell anyone because she was afraid that if she said the words out loud that it would be real. It was easier to pretend like it wasn't happening when other people were none the wiser. If other people knew, they would ask how she was. She didn't know how she was and she didn't even want to think about it. She didn't lose her hair. She didn't have to go through chemo and radiation. She just had to have surgery, so she felt like it wasn't even a real cancer anyway. It was all weird and she didn't want it to be weirder than it already was.

It was easier to tough it out alone than to face reality and say the words out loud.

Em has three children, all boys. Her middle son is one of Mini-me's best friends in the whole wide world. They are just like peas and carrots.

None of their deliveries were simple or easy. She went septic after the first and needed an emergency hysterectomy immediately after the last was born through Cesarean section.

She has never really even processed the loss of her future fertility and admitted as much. This whole experience is forcing her to do it now. The finality of it all sinking in. At the time of the hysterectomy, the gynecologist removed her uterus and about half of her cervix, needing to leave part of it because of swelling.

A year and a half later, she needed to have the remaining portion of her cervix cauterized for bleeding.

She was always on top of her annual checkups and Pap smears. She had never had a single abnormal Pap.

In the fall of 2012, she knew she had to go in to the doctor to have her check up before her insurance stopped. She was in the middle of divorcing her husband and wanted to make everything was taken care of while she was still covered. Had the Pap on a Friday, got a phone call on the next Tuesday. Never a good sign. There was some concern.

She needed a biopsy.

It was cancer.

Confused, she asked him how could this happen? I've been married forever.

The answer? HPV can lie dormant for years, decades even, then show up and cause trouble without warning.

In some ways, the impending divorce saved her life.

Her doctor sat her down and talked about options. It was early, it hadn't spread. Instead of doing an invasive surgery, he could try and remove what was left of her cervix in an in-office procedure. As long as the margins were good, this might be all that was necessary. She agreed, had the procedure, almost all of the cervix was taken.

Of course she sent me a text with a picture of the pieces of her cervix in a jar.

Of course.


Because that is the kind of relationship we have.

The margins were clear, everything looked good. She was relieved and ready to move on with this scary episode behind her.

Three months later, she had to go in for a check up. She was supposed to be declared cancer-free. She wasn't.

The cancer was back and she was out of options. She had to have the full surgery.

She's now had four surgeries in four years.

This time, both fallopian tubes, one ovary and what was left of her cervix were removed. The procedure was slightly complicated by the fact that her cervix had fused to her bladder. The healing was rougher this time around. A few weeks later, I sat by the pool with her and told her really bad jokes. But not the kind that make you laugh too much because that hurts.

Some of the jokes just presented themselves through no fault of my own. And that's totally an inside thing.

Just after the surgery, she used the C word for the first time with her boys. They'd known that Mom was sick before, that sometimes she didn't feel good, but this was the first time that they were told what was actually going on.

The first time that Mom and cancer were put in the same sentence.

Trying to explain why she was emotionally all over the place, she told them that when women have hormone changes, like when they have a baby, their bodies can't always manage the changes well. Since one of her ovaries was taken out and her body wasn't really sure what was going on with the sudden hormone drop, she was crying a lot for no reason.

Her middle son went to Sunday School at church the next day and said this:


She hadn't told hardly anyone at church anything, and all of a sudden had a lot of explaining to do.

As word began to spread, months after she had actually been diagnosed, she realized in a hurry that having other people know wasn't all that helpful. She still didn't want to talk about it.

There was more though, this other part of it, the fact that this is the type of cancer that carries a stigma with it. People make assumptions about women with cervical cancer, none of which ever applied to her. She was married, monogamous and had been religious about checkups. This wasn't supposed to happen to her.

But it did.

We talked about this aspect of it for a while, because we both feel like all the education towards vaccination against certain strains of HPV has actually attached more of a stigma to cervical cancer than there ever was in the past.

It isn't just a cancer that women get from a virus that most people carry as adults anymore, it's a cancer that women who have sex get from partners who are infected. It's an STD gone bad now.

Cervical cancer has always been most commonly caused by HPV. People have always had HPV, men and women. It's just that now everyone talks about it. Which is good in some ways, certainly, but bad in others because it makes this cancer more than just a disease...it makes it something that, to some degree, is shamed.

Think about it.

It's impossible to have any conversation about the vaccines without it turning into some religious debate about condoning promiscuity and teen sex. Married, monogamous women can still get HPV, can still get cancer, can still die. Period.

Emily is proof of it.

When asked what she wants people to know, aside from that truth, she said that just because you are married or monogamous does not mean that you should feel comfortable waiting longer between Pap smears. She had never had an abnormal result, and had been dutiful about annual exams, before her diagnosis.

Next month, she goes back again. For another checkup.

She's been to the checkup where everything was supposed to be fine and it wasn't. She's scared.

That's the thing about cancer that you learn the hard way. Once you have been there, you live in fear of it coming back. It changes everything.

If you want moral support, Em, I'll go with ya. I can't imagine what the doc would do with both of us there though. That's got to be too much inappropriateness for such a tiny room.

Thank you for being brave enough to share your story.

Love you.

So you shared some status about your purse on Facebook in some secret underground movement to remind other women to do breast self exams, then you patted yourself on the back for spreading awareness?

Congratulations.

I'm afraid that's not enough, though.

Those little internet viral dares to share aren't real awareness, not to those of us who've been put through the hell of cancer in real life.

Once you're had cancer take your life, turn it upside down, shake it vigorously and completely change everything, you understand that true awareness is more than that.

Real cancer awareness screams from the rooftops to feel your boobs, feel your balls, get your ass to the doctor when something is wrong NOW. Real awareness doesn't giggle nervously in the corner while sharing some secret message about a bra on Facebook.

Real awareness demands more. Demands people get over the notion that certain body parts are icky and to be hidden, not to be touched, and get over it right now.

Guess what? You have to touch them. You have to feel them up and get to know every square centimeter of them. You have to. It's your life.

The best way to find a lump isn't the annual mammogram that most women get, it's self exams at home...but you have to do them frequently enough to notice subtle changes.

The way that most cases of testicular cancer are discovered is through self exams too, that's how my husband found his. True story.

Feel your boobs, ladies.

Feel your balls, gentlemen.

GET ALL UP IN THERE.

Stand in front of mirrors and LOOK at your body, ladies. Really look at your body. Hold your arms up in the air and shake what your mama gave ya. Check your skin. Lift up your boobs and look under them. Turn sideways. Bend over. Lay down. Take a shower. Squeeze them, pinch them, jiggle them.

Yep. I'm talking to you.

Here's a graphic with happy mammary glands. You want happy mammary glands, right???

Do this.

www.iheartguts.com

I'm dead serious.

Guys, I'm talking to you too. Unlike women, who can pretty routinely develop fibrous tissue and calcium deposits and clogged milk ducts and all kinds of other loveliness in our boobs, your man sac is different. If anything feels weird down there, it's a sign that something might be very, very wrong.

Get to know your balls, guys.

Yes, you have permission to play with yourself. Get to it.

Your testicles should be roughly the same size and shape. There should be no abnormal textures or lumps or anything out of the ordinary. Nothing should hurt or be tender or be swollen. Here's a graphic of balls with happy faces on them for you.

From www.iheartguts.com

You want your balls to have happy faces, not sad faces, right?

I should be preparing for a huge event tonight.

I should be making posters and fairy wands and packing up the car with all the camping gear. I should be gathering donations and working my ass off to hit the fundraising goal. I should be walking around in circles for as long as it takes.

I should be holding my husband's hand on a survivor lap, I should be standing in the middle of the field while my father's picture and name flashes on a giant screen in the dark. I should be quiet and reflective. I should be crying. I should be angry and bitter at this horrible disease that stole his life, and that has changed mine too many times.

I should be.

Tonight is the Relay for Life.

Our team, the Tooth Fairies, named in his honor. If you haven't heard the story of why we are named that, you should read it. 


I should be out there.

I won't be.

I wasn't last year the way I should have been either. Last year was too hard. There was too much else going on outside my control and I couldn't do it.

The year before that, I cried and cried and cried in that field when his picture flashed on the screen for the first time as an in memory of instead of an in support of.

The year before that, we had hope even though it was slipping away a little bit more with every scan.

I should be out there, but I won't be.

My fundraising energies are going to be directed elsewhere this year, to the Light the Night walk in September, our team to be named in support of a little boy fighting leukemia, a little boy that I was there to meet the day he was born. My energies will go to the lung cancer walk in October, where money raised will go directly to research to help increase survivorship for this specific form of cancer.

My energies will go elsewhere this year because I won't be here for the Relay.

And my father would be proud of me, not because of where I won't be, but because of where I will be.

I will be somewhere in downtown Denver, doing something crazy I don't know about yet, with my husband. The husband who planned this surprise anniversary staycation, not realizing it was the same weekend as the Relay. The husband that I need this time with.

Rebuilding my marriage is more important right now, and no one would understand that more than my father, the original Tooth Fairy.

He would tell me to pack my suitcase instead of the camping gear. He would tell me to go to Denver instead of the Relay. He would tell me to hang on to what I still have instead of missing what is gone.

He would tell me that even if I feel like I should be at the Relay, I shouldn't.

I should be where my heart tells me to go.

And my heart pushes me towards this.

Three years ago on Easter, I was back home in California with my parents and my children.  Dad was still here and he was fighting the cancer.  He'd grown his mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore cancer beard.

He looked so good that week.  So good.


I spent a lot of time yesterday reflecting on the past. I looked up at the sky and saw a heart shaped cloud.  Knew he was there.

He tends to do that when I need it.

Then I started to think about how giving he was at the end, how much he cared about everyone else, how much he went out of his way to help other people through his death.  It really was remarkable to watch, and I consider myself blessed to have been a part of his life.

I've written before about what he did in those last few weeks, mostly before many of my readers were here.  I'll share this piece of him with you again.

I went home for his last three weeks.  Once he was put on hospice, I left to go back.  I knew it wouldn't be long, and so did he.

He had very clear ideas of what he wanted to take care of before he was gone.  Some of it he did alone, some of it he needed help with.

Some of it will stay with the people he touched forever.

Almost eleven years before my father died, he lost his oldest brother Donnie in a freak car accident.  A girl, high and drunk, crossed the center median and hit him head on one morning while he was driving to work.  From one second to another, he was just gone.

He was laid to rest under weeping cloudy skies, the 21 gun salute piercing the morning stillness. Military funerals really are the worst.

My dad, with the white shirt in the middle. Uncle Donnie, second from the right, next to Grandma. I want to say this picture is from '93?

His death hit everyone in the family hard.  So sudden, completely unexpected, totally unfair.  He was young and handsome and strong, then he was just gone.  No opportunity to say goodbye to anyone.

When my dad was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, he refused to accept the death sentence he was given.  He fought and fought and fought, until he knew it was time to let the fight end.  I had many conversations with him those last few weeks, and we talked about Donnie a lot.  He didn't want the family to go through that again.

Under false pretenses, we asked them to come to the house and visit with him.  He was running out of time and he wanted to see them all, we said.  His sisters and brothers, his nieces and nephews.  Almost all of them made it.

Some came individually, some came together.  Some came more than once.  Others moved in and camped out in the living room with us for a few nights. On one day, we gathered in the garage with almost everyone around a cooler of beer and told the same old stories over and over again.  We laughed and laughed and laughed.  It was as though it was just another reason to celebrate, another party, another holiday.  Like old times.

He talked to them all, he smiled and thanked them all for coming to see him.

There were a few tears, but not too many.  He told them jokes, he shared laughs, he told them not to be sad.  He mended fences. He buried hatchets. He said things to people that had gone unsaid before, he listened to what others told him.

He held their hands, asked them to take care of one another, look out for each other. Told them he loved them.  Reassured them all that he was okay.  That he was going to be okay.  That they were going to be okay.

He kissed them goodbye, hugged them for the last time, waved to them as they pulled away in their cars.

He didn't do it for him.  He did it for them.

He was exhausted and worn out afterwards.  It took everything out of him for a few days.  For the vast majority of them all, it was the last time they'd ever see him.  The last time they would hear his laugh and see his bright blue eyes.

He was glad to see them, of course, but he did it for them.

He did it for love.

His last, greatest gift to them all.

It was beautiful to watch.

Cancer.

It's something that has invaded my life and changed it irreversibly more than once, and I'm not alone.  It's taken my family, it's taken my friends.

In other ways, it's connected me to some of the most amazing people in the world.

My dear friend, Mary Tyler Mom reached out to me last week, along with several other bloggers.

She asked for help.  When she asks for help, she gets it.

Within a few days of her asking, I decided to make this personal.  I last cut my hair in 2010, when my father was alive and fighting like hell still.  I cut off 10 inches back then and donated it in his honor.  Since his death two years ago, I haven't been able to bring myself to cut it.

I have a lot of hair at the moment.

I know now that I wasn't just struggling with an emotional attachment to my Dad.  I was waiting.

I was waiting for today.

Later this morning, I will cut off a foot of my own hair in the hopes that my gesture will urge you all to give to this amazing cause, St. Baldrick's.  

Please give whatever you can.

The woman who will be cutting my hair this time was the one who cut it last when I donated it.  She's also the one who donated her time to shave heads for me last year when I organized a fundraiser for a little boy fighting cancer here.  Her name is Devonie, and if you're on the Front Range, give her a call.  She is amazing.


I do this today in support of Donna, and as a sign of my dedication to the cause. I am hoping that I'll inspire others to contribute money by doing this, and will post pictures when it's done.  

I will be donating the hair to Children With Hair Loss, an organization that provides wigs and hairpieces to children with medically caused hair loss free of charge. 


When I mentioned that we were coming together as writers, as parents, as friends, to help her celebrate Donna's Day and to raise money for children's cancer research, several others bloggers asked if they could join in as well.

The internet is alive with this love and support today, all for MTM and her beautiful girl, Donna.

Donna.

Mary Tyler Mom lost that beautiful girl to cancer in 2009, and if you haven't read the story, I urge you to do so.  She chronicled the entire journey, sharing the reality of this disease with the world, and the stories were featured on the Huffington Post.  You can find her story here.


The goal of Donna Day is to raise money for St. Baldrick's, an organization that funds childhood cancer research.  The charity that Mary Tyler Mom started in her daughter's memory, Donna's Good Things, is sponsoring a head shaving event in Chicago on March 30th.

The team page has a link to donate directly, and you can find it here.

The statistics on childhood cancers are sobering, even more so when you realize how poorly funded the research on them is currently.

• More US children will die from cancer than any other disease, or many other diseases combined;
• Before the age of 20, 1 in 300 boys and 1 in 333 girls will be diagnosed with cancer;
• worldwide, a child is diagnosed ever three minutes;
• the cure rate for the most common form of pediatric cancer, ALL leukemia, is as high as 90%, but most other childhood cancers do not have that success rate, e.g., brain tumors have a 50/50 cure rate, and some, like DIPG, are known to be fatal with no known treatment or cure;
• 73% of kids who survive their cancer will have chronic health problems as a result of their treatment and 42% will suffer severe or life-threatening conditions like secondary cancers.  

There are portions of the year that are just a bit more emotional for me.  The second half of January and the first half of February fall into that category.  They'll probably always stay that way.  I am grateful that I came upon the story I wrote about yesterday for the simple, selfish fact that it distracted me from what I was really thinking about. 

Two years ago, yesterday, I woke before sunrise.   I arrived at the airport just before dawn and watched as the sky grew full of magnificent colors and light from the bridge to the terminal.  I knew where I was going, and I knew why.  I'd spent the prior two weeks making the preparations to leave.  I knew that the time was near, and I knew I would have to go.

My father was dying.

Though I was never able to fully explain it to anyone then or now, I just knew that it was time for me to go.  He had been told the day prior that the cancer had grown far more aggressive, that the tumors now infiltrated both his lungs and his liver.  That the chemo he'd just been given hadn't made a difference. 

He had two oncologists.  One was a realist.  At first my parents hated that man, with his somber talk of staging and time.  They didn't ever want to hear what he had to say, because they wanted to cling to whatever tiny piece of hope they could, even when it became obvious that the hope was slipping away.  The other oncologist, different.  He was the guy who never let you believe it was over.  The one who gave unending hope, let you hang on to that chance of making it, even if it was less than 5%.  He was the guy who'd let you keep fighting even when your body screamed at you to stop.  He was the guy who'd let you go out in a blaze of glory, even if he knew it would never make a difference.

I am grateful, so grateful, that my father had them both.  They balanced each other.  Sometimes he needed one, sometimes he needed the other.  And then, one day, the first told him the fight was coming to an end.  The second offered to load the cannons again. 

And he was done. 

He was ready to stop fighting.  He was tired of being sick.  He accepted that his time with them was done, and hospice was called.

I flew home the morning that hospice came.  The flight was hard, harder than the one I'd made the year before when he was in respiratory distress and in the ICU.  Harder than the flight I'd made home after he was discharged and settled.  This one was harder, because I knew it was the last one.  I knew.

I knew that even though they said he might have six weeks that he didn't, and I knew I had to go now.

I had always known this day would come.

My brother picked me up that morning, and the look on his face told me that it was bad.  Worse than it was when we'd left just two weeks earlier after spending Christmas back home.  He was right.

Dad was curled up in a ball when I got there.  Almost catatonic.  I suspected that it wasn't the cancer, but the medications.  I talked to the hospice nurse, and we devised a plan.  We'd take him off all of it, save the pain meds, adjust the dosages of those, and see what happened. 

The next day, he was back.  He was alert.  He was talking and laughing.  He was smoking pot in the garage and eating entire jars of peanuts.  He was drinking margaritas with us on the patio. 

He spent some time most afternoons out there, oxygen tubing snaked through the house.  Out there, he could just be.



I had some tough conversations with him that first week, some of the hardest discussions I have ever had in my life.  I had to sit him down and witness the DNR paperwork.  I had to be the one in the room when he asked the doctor what it would feel like to die.  I had to ask whether he wanted to be alert or knocked out.  I knew that to keep him alert, he'd have to exchange some degree of pain, as the cancer had progressed so much, but I left that in his hands. 

He asked me to do whatever I could to keep him alert for as long as I could.  And so, the dance began. 

When cancer affects someone's liver, it completely changes how they metabolize everything, including medications.  Every day required adjustments.  Sometimes tranquilizers, sometimes anti-anxiety meds, sometimes sleeping pills, sometimes more pain meds.  All of it changed, every day. 

I was a walking alarm clock, sometimes with ten different alarms set a day for medication.  I took him to work, then hung out in the parking lot until he was ready to go back home.  He wanted to go, but he wanted me there.  So, I did it. 

I carried nausea medication, ativan, oxycodone and morphine in my purse as if that's something normal people do.

I slept in fifteen minute increments, I kept my glasses on all the time so I could peek across the room and check on him.  The agitation always got worse at night, and it made me nervous.

He wanted to see his family, so we made that happen.  They all came, save a few.  The night two of his sisters spent the night and we all camped out in the living room is one I will never forget and will always be grateful for.  He made time for the people he needed to.  He made one last delivery run for work.  He made amends for the past, he held the hands of his brothers.  He comforted them, he comforted us all.

He worried that I was missing my family back home, he urged me to leave if I needed to.  I told him that I was there to help him for as long as he needed me.  We had an understanding.

The morning of my birthday, even though the night before had been a rough one, he got up and showered and dressed, then announced we were going out for breakfast.  Told me that even though it was my birthday, I had given him the gift that year.

He was gone four days later.

I had been home less than three weeks.

I miss him every day, and this experience changed me in so many ways.  The lessons I've learned I have tried to pass on to anyone starting down this path.