Dad Cancer in 2020 Vision

Here it is, my once-every-year entry. Or at least that what it feels like. I’ve really slowed the writing. I think I was last writing about my trip home recaps before I started to slide off the Prosebox writing habit. That was August of last year that I took that trip home, and I don’t feel like I’ve written a lot since then.

Well, I’m getting ready for another trip home to Wisconsin. This time it’s to visit my dad who was diagnosed with Stage 3B colon cancer around April of this year. I’ve been meaning to write about it, but it just feels too overwhelming. I mean I barely get to talk about it with my therapist who I only get to see for 30 minutes every 4-6 weeks because therapists everywhere here are all backed up. I stick with her tho because I like her. She did offer to find me a referral for someone who can see me longer/more often, but because of my therapist-before-current therapist, I’m hesitant about losing an actual good therapist. And also, I did my own research, and I’m not even sure she could find someone who 1) is currently accepting new clients and 2 ) who accepts my insurance. I’m not going to private pay.

Anywho, dad is 60, almost 61 years old, and not doing so well. He just finished radiation treatments, and is on a temporary break from chemo. He has been in consistent pain and even had 2 kidney stones that needed to be surgically removed (and then had to deal with that pain on top of the colon cancer pain). He has two surgeries at the end of august. I think they are removing the cancerous parts of the colon but not the entire colon. He will need to stay in the hospital for 7-10 days after his surgeries. Then he will need to restart the chemo, but he doesn’t know for how long. His body is really reacting negatively to the chemo treatments, more so than the average negative reactions it sounds like. He’s currently on a morphine prescription because his pain is so awful. He texted me the other day saying he stood up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and he collapsed onto the floor because his body was too physically weak to stand.

I already have a very super complicated relationship with my dad. I’m really nervous about what I will find in regards to how he looks when I see him in about a week. The last time I talked to him on the phone it sounded like he’d aged 20 years, so that’s what I’m kind of expecting him to visually look like too. So yeah, I have a lot of feelings about all of this but that will have to another entry as I’m not ready to dive into all of that right now. Just wanted to do a small update.