Dear Cancer, Thank You For Killing My Father

Death comes in many forms and leaves us in its wake.

Is the glass half empty, or half full? Personally, I don’t fucking care because it’s wine and I’m going to drink it and give myself a refill. I would so love to be one of those people that is always positive and believes in the good of the world, but as you might have picked up from a few of my other articles or even just the first sentence of this one, I just fucking can’t sometimes.

“It’s everywhere,” my mom told us. We rushed to our childhood home, all five of us, so my parents could tell us that Dad's scan revealed the melanoma was in his lymph nodes and was a stage four. The full-body scan lit up like an ugly Christmas tree and he had tumors…everywhere. When I say everywhere, I literally mean from the back of his neck, littering his torso and legs, all the way down to one of his big toes.

Fucking everywhere.

Spring of 2010 had just taken a drastic, dark turn that none of us saw coming.

My sister, the kind heart, started crying immediately. One of the younger brothers walked out of the house. His twin and I wanted the plan of attack, and our oldest brother sat silently on the couch holding my mom's hand.

I know there was noise, the sound of my sister sniffling and my mom talking, but I don’t remember any noise. I remember silence. My brain shut out all external stimuli, and I found myself just staring at my dad.

Relatively young, at 53, my dad was working and living a vibrant and happy life with my mom. They had just shipped the twins off to colleges and finally had an empty nest after 35 years.

I’m not sure what I expected from him. Crying? Wailing? My dad is a stoic, yet a thoughtful man. He saw me staring at him, the rest of the kids crying or talking, and he got up and walked over to me.

“Roxy, everything happens for a reason, and we aren’t a family of quitters,” he said to me. Towering at 6 feet 6 inches, he stooped down to give me a bear hug. I felt my heart shrink to that of a little girl, scared and vulnerable. Even though I was a professional, living on my own, at that moment my dad was embracing his little girl to offer her reassurance.

My mom laid the plan for chemo and biopsies to come. All in all, my dad ended up having twenty-seven biopsies on different masses around his body. He had the great distinction of being the one single patient who had the most biopsies performed in the history of that particular hospital.

I don’t know why doctors tell people things like that. Should we make him a fucking trophy? It’s probably because small talk is difficult when your patient has the grim reaper riding his ass.

My dad, a true scientist at heart, knew exactly how his cancer steadily worked to destroy his body. He could explain in exceedingly nerdy detail how cancer invaded your body and disguised itself as a friend while killing you. His scientific brain saved him from a lot of emotional anguish, that’s for certain.

My family did what they did best, and showed up prepared to fight right alongside my parents. I took my dad to his daily chemotherapy treatments so my mom could continue to work and pay their bills. On days I couldn’t, one of the younger brothers picked up the slack. The others cooked, cleaned, called, and ensured my parents wanted nothing.

This particular course of chemotherapy was four weeks long. Four weeks? That will go by in the blink of an eye. It’s always interesting to me that time is relative to the amount of pain or joy you are experiencing. Like talking to a good friend for ten minutes goes by in a blink, compared to ten minutes on the stair master at the gym. I’m convinced Einstein discovered the Theory of Relativity while on a stair master.

Fuck that thing for real, y’all.

Chemotherapy is a blessing and a curse. To spare drawn-out details, during the second week, sitting next to his bed in our own little cubicle of hell, my dad began to shake uncontrollably. He kept telling me he was freezing, so I asked the nurse for a blanket.

Then the shaking became so intense he was knocking things over. The nurses rushed over, took vitals, and everything seemed normal. His body finally calmed, and we chalked it up to a strange side effect. The next day, the same outcome. The day after that, the same thing happened, and we rushed him to the emergency room.

They explained extreme shivers like that are called rigors. The chemotherapy drug (poison) was tricking my dad’s brain into believing he was going into hypothermia despite maintaining a completely normal, sometimes elevated, temperature in reality. If you are a medical professional, let us just ignore my very non-clinical summary. Thanks.

We did this little dance between chemotherapy and the emergency room for a few more days. Then his doctor let us know the medication they had to give him, to calm his rigors, was negating any benefits he would receive from the chemo treatments.

Well, what in the fucking fuck.

These rigors were so intense, they broke down his muscle tissue and he lost 40 pounds in the blink of an eye. One night I remember bringing him home, he laid in bed, the rigors started and my mom rushed over with a blanket. She literally laid her body on top of him and hugged him tight in hopes it would help in some way. It didn’t. He was shaking so badly the headboard was repeatedly slamming into the wall, chipping paint, nearly knocking a hole in it.

That.

That banging.

The chipping.

My mom sobbed as she held her love.

That will never leave me.

Chemo stopped earlier than planned and my father finally had a break from constant hospital visits. Many things progressed over the following year, including more tumors detected, and one tumor growing to essentially disintegrate a vertebra.

A spinal fusion later, many tablets of morphine and fentanyl patches to manage pain, and my behemoth of a father was reduced to a stammering, drooling, lost skeleton. If you know anything about those two drugs, you know the combination of them is addicting, dangerous, and all-consuming.

Life went about like this for some time. All my memories of that time are colorless. Literally, no sounds, no color, just moving pictures of an animated, crestfallen family. We always hoped for good news from his appointments, until we found it was dangerous to do so.

At that time, I hoped for nothing and knew nothing of the direction my life would go. I had a few very close friends that without a doubt, kept me moving. I know the two of you are reading this now, and I have an eternal, unrelenting love for you both.

My job became keeping my mom's spirits up and coping with my own emotions in private. I had my calendar marked with my dad's appointments whether I was going to them or not. My mom called me right after one of his scheduled visits with his oncologist. She simply said, “There is a spot in some medical trial they are going to put your dad in.”

At first, images of lab rats, electrodes, and whatever else media had imprinted on my brain flashed before my eyes. I was skeptical but could hear the hope in my mother's voice. So I kept the doubt to myself and rejoiced in the news we were given that day, just as she was.

That is one of the gifts I was given from this god-awful mess. I learned how to move on from the past, be grateful for what we have today, and wait for the future to happen. Normally, I like to do this really cool thing where I come up with all the possibilities for the future and then worry about all of them simultaneously. It is super fun in my brain y’all, trust me.

However, I saw my mom rejoicing in “The Today”. Finding pleasure and excitement in the tiniest bit of news, food, or anything else she could find. Her glass was half-full at that time because it just fucking had to be for her to survive.

To save you reading time, we learned my dad did not have negative reactions to this chemo. It was being tolerated, and better yet…effective.

Gradually, body scans begin to reveal fewer and fewer cancer masses. He slowly removed himself from the pain medications, dangerous I know, but he gave no fucks. He began working again, and I saw the universe give him the gift of life in his eyes. He was back. Scarred, and three inches shorter from back surgery, but we didn’t care one bit.

He was with us.

These trial chemotherapy treatments continued on for years until one fine, magical day, he was told cancer could no longer be detected on any scans. “I’m unremarkable the doctor said,” he boasted proudly on the phone,

Wow, right? Is it remission? Is the cancer hiding? Is the machine that does the scans…did y’all check to make sure it was plugged in? Make sure you blow the dust off it so it works right, a-la Nintendo game cartridge style. Alright, y’all know blowing on those fucking helped. Don’t deny it. We all did a lot of blowing in our day. Perverts.

So, we moved forward with a tiny bit of hope, but from the PTSD that came with experience, we were vigilant and realistic. Always ready to receive “the call” from either my mom or dad. He continued to take on more work, became more talkative, and regained his smile.

The five “kids”, grown-ass adults but we acted like kids even still, received an email one day, from my dad. He told us he was sitting there receiving this trial chemo as he was writing to us. He began to explain his takeaways from this terrible course of events. I read his thoughts on how so many things had to line up to create the student that ended up discovering this type of therapy, leading to his enrollment in the trial.

One thing we didn’t know until much later, was the trial was so successful, the manufacturer was applying to the FDA for an emergency use authorization. In order to do that, no additional trials can be started while the information is being reviewed. We found out my dad got the last slot, of the last trial being conducted, in the United States.

My Dad wrote to us about our perception of life. Never one to repeat popular motivational quotes, he encouraged us to remember what we know to be true today, may not be true tomorrow. He ended this very personal, powerful letter with a plead for us to “Live Gratefully”. A few days later we all received blue silicone bracelets in the mail with “Live Gratefully” inscribed on them.

I still wear mine today.

When I got married in late 2014, my dad walked into the bridal suite and I asked him if he was okay. He looked at me and said “Roxy, I wasn’t even supposed to be here today. There’s no way I’m going to shed tears on a day I thought I would never see.” He had the biggest smile on his face I had ever seen, and I was proud and grateful to make that walk with him by my side.

Cancer killed so many things.

Cancer killed my Grandfather. Cancer killed all of my great aunts and uncles. I’m sure you, dear reader, have been touched by the icy hand of cancer in one way or another. I’m very sorry if you are part of this dismal club.

Cancer killed our hope. Cancer killed my father’s spark. Cancer killed any innocence we kids had left in us. Cancer killed our optimism. Cancer killed our expectation of a trauma-free life.

However, cancer taught us how to rejoice and be grateful for any good received in a single day. Cancer taught us the universe is always hard at work, lining things up just so, even though we cannot see it. Cancer killed any doubt my father had in himself and the courage he possesses. Cancer killed any perceptions of weakness Mom had about herself. Cancer taught me what unconditional love looked like that one horrible day when my mom was laying on top of my dad as a hole was punched in the wall.

This specific cancer, in my Dad, taught me to remember that miracles do exist. We will never escape hardship in this life. It is not possible. I know I am incredibly blessed to still have him today.

The true tragedy would be to experience suffering such as this, and not also acknowledge the gifts. There will always be pain, and there were always be gifts. Sometimes, we just need time and distance from the pain to see what those gifts are.

I leave you with the words of my dad to remember: “Live Gratefully.”

I have to go, my phone is ringing, and it’s my father.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about a little piece of me. Feel free to visit my profile for more. 18+ only, please. Thank you!