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Oct. 23rd, 2021 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catharsis_logsIt's been a busy and incredibly emotional couple of days. Starting on Thursday when my dad had his appointment with a surgeon at 8:30am about his cancer.
A pretty large portion of my denial has ended, quite painfully.
So. My sis the day before yesterday right after I woke up, came out of her room to tell me what had happened at the surgeon's office for my dad's appointment with the surgeon about the tumor. She told me that our dad has Stage 3 lung cancer and that the surgeon can't operate (or at least can't operate without a high potential of killing my dad). The surgery would involve a lot of pain, a long recovery time (if he recovers at all), a high potential for infection, and they might not get all of the cancer anyway.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF SURGERY HERE Basically it involves opening my dad up from the side where the tumor is at. They would have to break and spread his ribs, open his lung up, cut as much of the tumor out as they could, sew my dad up, wrap him up, and hope that infection hasn't crawled in to any of the very delicate places that the surgery would expose. Another problem with that surgery besides the obvious is that where the tumor is at basically my dad's entire set of nerves in that area are lined up really nicely to be irritated by the surgery. My dad is already having nerve pain in one of those nerves where the tumor leans up against and he doesn't want to think about more of them being irritated. END DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF SURGERY HERE
An interesting thing about my body is that my anxiety tends to move around in my body. Recently the anxiety specifically about my dad has been the most present in my stomach, making me nauseous and giving me stomach aches. This ache crawls up into my esophagus and reaches fingers up into the back of my throat and behind my eyes, making me yawn and my eyes water.
After my sister practically cornered me to tell me the news without my dad even being there I went downstairs in a daze and took half an anxiety med and sat at the computer trying to think of anything else. I was irritable and wanted to be alone. I avoided my dad a little and basically crawled inside my clam shell for the entire day.
Yesterday things came to a head. My dad had his appointment with his oncologist at 4pm and he came home around 6pm. He got home, we unpacked what he'd purchased at the store (he got me and my sister presents: little plates with cool halloween pictures on them) and he sat down and told us the news. Chemo and radiation, as soon as possible.
I was thinking of bringing up the idea of getting someone to help us around the house because all three of us suffer from various mental and physical maladies that make doing things around the house difficult. I looked at my dad and kinda asked if he was too tired and wiped out to talk about stuff and he said yes he was tired but what was it and my sis pushed at me to talk about it and so I finally just started talking about how I wanted to spend time with my dad but that I was worried that I wouldn't be able to because of my CFS being piled with anxiety and also wanting to take care of the house for the things that I wanted to get done (and that also might be useful to have done in a house with someone who is going through chemo and radiation). He started to get a little agitated, which I don't blame him at all for cuz he's really touchy about getting someone to help us and I wanted to back off but my sis suggested something, kinda missing my own observation and after she sugested something I kinda told her "I don't think we're even at the point of getting someone to help" and that's when she stormed upstairs. I let her go because I assumed (ahh, assuming, like that's ever a good thing) she was overwhelmed and needed some time to let off emotion.
So she went off to her room and I continued to talk to my dad a little, eventually attempting to help him understand my CFS a little better when we hear this shriek coming from upstairs. We pause our conversation a little bit, but I think at that point neither of us wanted to go upstairs so my dad texted her to ask if she was okay and we kinda hesitantly continued our conversation.
And then my sis came downstairs, sobbing really hard and kinda collapsed in the doorway and just wailed. This was difficult because she was in an area that was hard for both me and my dad to reach (but especially my dad) and she kinda confronted me about how she viewed my telling her earlier "I don't think we're..." as a brush off, which was hard for me to hear because I honestly didn't consider what I did to be malicious or to have any negative connotations at all beyond "helping dad" but it was also my own avoidance.
She cried, we comforted her. She's really not doing well. She's having insomnia, her boyfriend broke up with her pretty much right when we knew that our dad has cancer, and she's in therapy for the first time in a long time which is bound to be bringing up emotion and also this is kinda all a flashback to when our mom died and what living with that afterward was like.
I myself have been having feelings disturbingly like what I felt after my mom died: (which was another huge life change that heralded even more change (beginnings of puberty, onset of depression+anxiety, lifestyle changes, etc)) like a pain so great it became almost white noise except I wasn't able to do anything beyond experiencing that white noise. I was tempted to crawl under my desk and lie down on the floor, which was another remnant of when my grandma+mom died. It's something I'll need to keep an eye on.
So she kinda expressed her pain and her fear and she kinda corralled me and my dad into expressing some of our own fears and sadness and I mentioned going to see a grief counselor (even if we don't need one for a literal loss soon which is where my hopes are). I cried too but I didn't sob, it was more of a leaking out of my eyes of fear and pain.
So. I'm gonna call my therapist on monday, and I'm thinking of emailing my physical therapist on resources for people going through chemo and the loved ones of people going through chemo. This is going to be a lot, for all of us. I don't like seeing my dad or sister in pain, and they don't like seeing me and each other in pain, and this is... a huge painful thing.
A pretty large portion of my denial has ended, quite painfully.
So. My sis the day before yesterday right after I woke up, came out of her room to tell me what had happened at the surgeon's office for my dad's appointment with the surgeon about the tumor. She told me that our dad has Stage 3 lung cancer and that the surgeon can't operate (or at least can't operate without a high potential of killing my dad). The surgery would involve a lot of pain, a long recovery time (if he recovers at all), a high potential for infection, and they might not get all of the cancer anyway.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF SURGERY HERE Basically it involves opening my dad up from the side where the tumor is at. They would have to break and spread his ribs, open his lung up, cut as much of the tumor out as they could, sew my dad up, wrap him up, and hope that infection hasn't crawled in to any of the very delicate places that the surgery would expose. Another problem with that surgery besides the obvious is that where the tumor is at basically my dad's entire set of nerves in that area are lined up really nicely to be irritated by the surgery. My dad is already having nerve pain in one of those nerves where the tumor leans up against and he doesn't want to think about more of them being irritated. END DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF SURGERY HERE
An interesting thing about my body is that my anxiety tends to move around in my body. Recently the anxiety specifically about my dad has been the most present in my stomach, making me nauseous and giving me stomach aches. This ache crawls up into my esophagus and reaches fingers up into the back of my throat and behind my eyes, making me yawn and my eyes water.
After my sister practically cornered me to tell me the news without my dad even being there I went downstairs in a daze and took half an anxiety med and sat at the computer trying to think of anything else. I was irritable and wanted to be alone. I avoided my dad a little and basically crawled inside my clam shell for the entire day.
Yesterday things came to a head. My dad had his appointment with his oncologist at 4pm and he came home around 6pm. He got home, we unpacked what he'd purchased at the store (he got me and my sister presents: little plates with cool halloween pictures on them) and he sat down and told us the news. Chemo and radiation, as soon as possible.
I was thinking of bringing up the idea of getting someone to help us around the house because all three of us suffer from various mental and physical maladies that make doing things around the house difficult. I looked at my dad and kinda asked if he was too tired and wiped out to talk about stuff and he said yes he was tired but what was it and my sis pushed at me to talk about it and so I finally just started talking about how I wanted to spend time with my dad but that I was worried that I wouldn't be able to because of my CFS being piled with anxiety and also wanting to take care of the house for the things that I wanted to get done (and that also might be useful to have done in a house with someone who is going through chemo and radiation). He started to get a little agitated, which I don't blame him at all for cuz he's really touchy about getting someone to help us and I wanted to back off but my sis suggested something, kinda missing my own observation and after she sugested something I kinda told her "I don't think we're even at the point of getting someone to help" and that's when she stormed upstairs. I let her go because I assumed (ahh, assuming, like that's ever a good thing) she was overwhelmed and needed some time to let off emotion.
So she went off to her room and I continued to talk to my dad a little, eventually attempting to help him understand my CFS a little better when we hear this shriek coming from upstairs. We pause our conversation a little bit, but I think at that point neither of us wanted to go upstairs so my dad texted her to ask if she was okay and we kinda hesitantly continued our conversation.
And then my sis came downstairs, sobbing really hard and kinda collapsed in the doorway and just wailed. This was difficult because she was in an area that was hard for both me and my dad to reach (but especially my dad) and she kinda confronted me about how she viewed my telling her earlier "I don't think we're..." as a brush off, which was hard for me to hear because I honestly didn't consider what I did to be malicious or to have any negative connotations at all beyond "helping dad" but it was also my own avoidance.
She cried, we comforted her. She's really not doing well. She's having insomnia, her boyfriend broke up with her pretty much right when we knew that our dad has cancer, and she's in therapy for the first time in a long time which is bound to be bringing up emotion and also this is kinda all a flashback to when our mom died and what living with that afterward was like.
I myself have been having feelings disturbingly like what I felt after my mom died: (which was another huge life change that heralded even more change (beginnings of puberty, onset of depression+anxiety, lifestyle changes, etc)) like a pain so great it became almost white noise except I wasn't able to do anything beyond experiencing that white noise. I was tempted to crawl under my desk and lie down on the floor, which was another remnant of when my grandma+mom died. It's something I'll need to keep an eye on.
So she kinda expressed her pain and her fear and she kinda corralled me and my dad into expressing some of our own fears and sadness and I mentioned going to see a grief counselor (even if we don't need one for a literal loss soon which is where my hopes are). I cried too but I didn't sob, it was more of a leaking out of my eyes of fear and pain.
So. I'm gonna call my therapist on monday, and I'm thinking of emailing my physical therapist on resources for people going through chemo and the loved ones of people going through chemo. This is going to be a lot, for all of us. I don't like seeing my dad or sister in pain, and they don't like seeing me and each other in pain, and this is... a huge painful thing.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 02:25 am (UTC)It's so sweet that your dad brought little presents along with the news. I hope chemo and radiation do a good job of shrinking the cancer down to size without too many side effects for him.
And I'm really glad you're keeping an eye on how you're doing and making sure you're taking care of yourself. *offers hugs if wanted*
no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 10:42 pm (UTC)Long response incoming because my life is chaos right now
it's been a really rough few days. My sister broke down again, this time when I told her I wouldn't be able to help her with a 'small' thing. We were able to work things out but I didn't cry this time. I did call my therapist yesterday though and had an 'emergency' session with her because I really needed to talk with someone outside of the house so I could vent off some of the pressure and work through it in words, which I've found that I really need to do.
I was talking with her and found that I wasn't as emotional as I had been earlier. It will come in waves I know, but I was able to talk to her about how... it will be incredibly hard when my dad passes, and I will not be okay, probably for a while, but that I would get through to the other side of it. My life will not end when his does. I've been through a lot in my life and I've gotten through two other really heavy times in my life and I made it through those. I have some faith in my ability to handle it, to keep moving and growing. Doesn't mean it's not gonna hurt, but I'm able to recognize that it will hurt and also that I will be able to handle it.
My sister is also talking to a therapist weekly, which has already been helpful to her. I'm of the opinion that my dad and my sister should have been in therapy a long time ago, but I suppose I've been hogging that particular family brain cell XD
My dad has radiation early in the morning this friday, and that's gonna be hard. I have physical therapy tomorrow, which will be nice because my PT is almost like a secondary therapist (and I suppose the word Therapist is in her title haha) that I vent to. She's helping me more with balancing my fatigue than she is my pain and physical body at this point but she does say that the mind and body are inextricably woven together (and I can't believe I just wrote inextricably right on the first try lol) so working on one will help the other. But it'll be nice because she's another support I can lean on, and I think she'll be especially helpful in giving me resources for what it will be like to help someone going through radiation therapy and what I can do for my own energy levels in that context.
The idea of getting help around the house is a really hard one for my dad. He grew up in an era with the expectation that he would forever be able to do things himself, and that he was responsible for the state of the house, and teaching my sister and me how to do certain things. In my head I feel like I can just look up the things I need to know for how to fix a shower on wikihow or youtube, or looking up on google who I need to call to get help but my dad grew up without the internet and so he didn't have the casual access to astounding amounts of information that we do currently so he had to learn to be self-sufficient, and he also kinda grew up with a certain expectation of masculine independence. Plus he's also stated that doing stuff around the house is a kind of coping mechanism for him, but I told him recently (when my sis broke down a 2nd time over the shower curtain breaking and feeling like she had to fix it immediately even though she just wanted to take a bath) that we can get help for the big projects, like sealing up the house and getting rid of pests and getting and installing a new garbage disposal and fixing the hot tub, etc. we can just leave the organization and sorting things to my dad and us.
I feel like, with my CFS and figuring out my limits with that and learning tips and tricks I have a little more experience than my sis and dad with experimenting with doing things a different way that might make things easier on me. So I feel a little like a guiding figure in a sense. Like helping my sis understand that we don't need to fix the shower curtain right now we can just take baths and helping my dad understand how easy it might be to get someone to help us with projects. I also feel like a further wake-up call to my dad is how he might feel after the radiation. How it will be a lot easier on him physically if we can get some help and also understanding that my sister and I can't be there to help him all the time, and that he also doesn't want me and my sis to caretake for him which I think is a little bit of part of the problem with getting help because if family can't help him then he might not want help. :/
it is interesting how certain things in our culture can affect us. Like my dad is not a 'typical' man (whatever that is), he's gentle, understanding, caring, (somewhat) communicative, patient (for the most part lol) but also a little homophobic, not in a bigoted way, he believes that everyone has human rights and deserves love no matter what but in an "i don't understand" kind of way, and he's even growing in that, I think think thanks to one of his kids being about as queer as you can get and the other bi and gray-asexual; he's actually given thought that if he somehow falls in love with a man he wouldn't deny it or shy away from it. Just as a baby boomer he has certain blind spots to certain things just like as a millennial and where I live, and how I grew up I have blind spots about certain things too.
Anyway if you got this far thanks for reading lmao!
no subject
Date: 2021-10-28 11:30 pm (UTC)That's so huge, to recognize that the world is going to break our hearts sometimes, but that doesn't mean we won't get through it. I'm really glad you're able to find that, at least some of the time.
I'm also really glad that your sister has a therapist to help her process as well. And you make a great point that you have a lot of practice figuring out how to adapt things to make your life easier! It's a really important skill, especially during tough times, and it's awesome that you realize that.
You make a really interesting point about generational or cultural influences, too -- and I love that you're working to understand and sympathize with the things that make this hard for your dad. It can be really frustrating sometimes to have an idea about how to help and not get a chance to put it into practice, but you're really paying attention to his perspective and accepting that he's going to have to take things at his own pace. Which might be another skill it's easier to learn when we have to be patient with ourselves a lot of the time, now that I think about it.
Anyway, I'm sending continued good thoughts and support as you and your family continue to adapt to this new reality. I hope PT went well for you, and I hope your dad's radiation appointment goes as well as a scary new medical experience can go.