A family's experiences caregiving for a parent dying of brain cancer
It’s still so hard to deal with this topic. It was always hard to talk about the caregiving process and my father’s brain cancer while I was in the thick of it, so writing about it in my free time became unthinkable. I always had the hope of using what I had learned to make [...]
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Yesterday, suddenly, my father’s right side became so weak he could not stand. His speech slurred. It reminded me of when I admitted him to hospital back in October when I thought he was having a stroke. My thoughts were in contrast to what I should have been feeling. I should have been in great [...]
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His reactions are difficult to understand. To my wife, he can’t be in the same room with her. To the home health aide, he often gets angry and utters obscenities. To me, he is always kind and understanding, or at the very least, silent about his disapprovals. To the children, my father is lovely. For [...]
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Prior to confronting a life-threatening health event, all the information we are societally provided is engineered towards the best possible medical outcome, so it is a shock when a medical outcome is just one of several matters that must be considered when the cancer bombshell is dropped. For example, in the American medical “system” inadequate [...]
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Humor seems so simple. If what was happening to father wasn’t so terrible, the changes in his thought process as a result of the brain cancer would be fascinating. Most recently we noticed he is not able to comprehend humorous circumstances like he used to. The impact on his brain certainly furthered the minor paranoia [...]
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If I am a typical case, the caregiver of a brain cancer patient will have time for nothing. For me, time needs to be split between work, kids, wife, father, personal interests, father’s legal matters, father’s medical matters, and (ours and father’s) bills. I can’t focus on anything because for every task I do, I [...]
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Friend: how’s dad? Me: he’s struggling. We went to a restaurant the other day and it was tough to watch him eat. Me: overall he’s okay but for us, it’s tough watching someone die. Me: no happy news there, unfortunately Friend: right Friend: how much does he know? Me: he’s disappointed that the treatments haven’t [...]
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Nearly five months out from the original indication that something was wrong, my father feels cold all the time, his sense of proportion is lost, his sight and hearing wanes, the short term memory fails, and sometimes basic or routine functions seem unfamiliar to him. It’s not fair. It might have made more sense to [...]
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