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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I started this blog to share my experiences with other caregivers lost in the medical, financial, and legal chaos that ensues from a life-threatening diagnosis. Instead I find an unavoidable urge to vent about the misery that has consumed me. Jonathan Rauch’s article in the Atlantic is like reading a better written summary of my [...]
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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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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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My father is 67, just a few years into retirement. He had never been admitted to a hospital; he had never been seriously ill. My father lived alone for over 20 years, content with being a single man after the divorce, and fully capable of living his own life until October 2009. When he called [...]
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