John
About John
In October of 2014, I received a call from my Dad that shook me to my core. Cancer. One of the most earth-shattering words you never, ever want to learn the true meaning of. Dad found out he had prostate cancer, and bad. Stage four, tumors, everything destructive, all of it dark.
The cancer meant immediate chemotherapy. It meant instead of celebrating the holidays and the turn of the New Year, January would introduce us to radiation that doctors said was the “last resort” kind of radiation. Chemo and radiation, both at once.
In June of that same year, we had put our Rottweiler, a beautiful and kind soul (whom I had jokingly always told my boyfriend he was second to), Bubba, to sleep. Bubba was only 10 years old, good for a Rottie, but not nearly long enough for a soul mate. I held him in my arms and whispered my love into his velvet ears while he took his last breath and left us.
In July, my boyfriend of 5 years was fired from his job and spun down into a cycle of depression that took his alcoholism deeper and more frightening than it had ever been. Cleaning up the vomit and urine covering our couch, carpet, and walls was a daily experience now (before it had “only” been 3 or 4 nights a week). He was incoherent or unconscious, blacked out, every moment I was around him.
The first days of August, my boyfriend’s family and I held a professional-led intervention (precluded by an intensive 8-hour session where the family aired all of its grievances, including misplaced blame that fell upon me, one of his enablers). Sam agreed to go immediately to detox, then to a treatment facility, and then, unbeknownst to me until after the fact, to a sober living home that attempted to brainwash him into ending our relationship.
Two days after Sam went to detox and rehab, I started a new job. None of my new coworkers knew anything about what was going on in my life. I pasted a smile on.
At home, I had fewer than 30 days to figure out where I was going to live, because I couldn’t support myself in our shared apartment on my single income, and I was helping pay off some of Sam’s debts.
My stress levels became so intolerable that I developed dyshidrotic eczema on my hands, entirely stress-induced, and for a month the blisters grew larger, itchier, and more painful on my hands until I ended up in the ER. My pinky finger was so bad I thought I had developed a staph infection and would need it amputated. My fingers ate themselves alive.
The first week of September, I packed up the home I had shared with my boyfriend for three years, by myself, with bandaged (and, thankfully, healing) hands. I packed my cat and moved in with a girlfriend. I wasn’t allowed to see Sam for 30 days. I got to see him once before he was moved into the sober living home, at which point I was told by staff that we would not be able to speak to one another for at least another 30 days, but that turned into 6 weeks. I couldn’t even ask him if this is what he wanted, it certainly wasn’t what I wanted! I had been there for him for 4 years of intense alcoholism and I couldn’t talk to him, I couldn’t hug him, or laugh with him, or cry over the life I was living that felt like it didn’t even belong to me. I couldn’t even talk to him, my PERSON, when I got the call.
The beginning of October, I got that call. Cancer. Stage four.
Life is a cruel, cruel mistress.
I lost my mom in November of 2012. She died 5 years to the day of living in her nursing home, where she rotted to death and died of early onset dementia. Now, in October of 2014, I had to come to the realization that at the age of 26, I was going to become an orphan. I’m not sure if this is something that all people think about when their parents die, whether young or old, but I know it’s something I thought about. I couldn’t believe that not only would my mom miss my wedding, but now my Dad probably would too. I had already lost my gentle-souled dog, I had lost my boyfriend and didn’t know where we stood, and I was losing my Dad.
So, I put my big girl pants on. I packed up my life for the second time in 4 months, and the first week of January 2015, I moved from my home of 5 years, San Diego, back to the home of my youth and in with my Dad so that I could be there to take care of him while he went through chemo and radiation.
For anyone who has taken care of a family member in this situation, I don’t need to detail it. People ask, you don’t know what to say. You paste that smile on. You stay positive. You scream. You cry. You crack inside and those cracks start to show on the outside and you tape them, plaster over them, hide them. You do everything you can to keep surviving.
And we survived. I survived. I made it through. He made it through. One day in April or May (honestly, the timeline at that point gets hazy because the radiation days are all so blurry), Dad called and said the cancer was gone.
Joy! Jubilation! Celebrations! Life.
…But we all know the cancer is never gone. Or, at least that is my experience with it.
The cancer has metastasized. The cancer is in the bones, the brain. Now, my loved ones ask what it’s like, how is he? How am I?
Well, I am here. I am surviving. I am healthy, I am happy. I am engaged to my now almost 4-years sober fiancé. I have a great job. I have a wonderful home.
But I know what metastasized brain cancer means. I know what the newest round of chemotherapy means. I know that Dad doesn’t want to take the second kind of chemo his doctors are pushing on him. I know that in a year, in two, in five, my sister and I will be orphans. I know my Dad may not be at my wedding, he may not be there to walk me down the aisle.
I’ll survive. But I’d really just like my Dad to survive with me. Because he’s always been my hero, whether he should be or not, and I love him desperately. I can’t imagine the day I don’t get to pick up the phone and know he’ll always answer. I can’t imagine not being able to drive 15 minutes to go see him. I know that day will come, but for now, I just say fuck cancer. Live this life. Love this life.
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