Its been a long week. Strike that, its been a long 3 years.
It was that long ago that my Dad was diagnosed with cancer.
He passed away this week on Teusday. I think. Everything is running together in my head without a lot of sense.
He was at the hospital, we had admitted him to the transitional care unit the previous Friday. He wasn't able to He was at the hospital, we had admitted him to the transitional care unit the previous Friday. He wasn't able to swallow his medications anymore. He would have rather died at home I know, but his mental capacity was too far gone for us to take care of him. He would get up in the middle of the night and fall down, and one night he even tore out his catheter. Ouch!
Its like for the past month we have been walking together down a very rocky, winding, tough road. Only he has been walking faster and faster, and growing more distant as he has moved farther down the path in front of me. This week he finally moved out of sight.
At least thats the kind of sappy shit that I try to think. In truth, I don't think there is much dignity in death. He went downhill quickly. It wasn't the cancer that killed him, but the treatment for it. The radiation he went through in order to kill the tumors in his head also killed him. In the last few weeks his brain atrophied rapidly.
He turned from a person into a breathing husk of a person. A vessel where something, someone, lived but didn't any longer. I suppose its sort of like watching a child grow up in reverse. He went from a thinking adult into a babbling infant unable to control his very bowel movements very quickly. The horror of it was that he understood what was happening to him. He felt an awful loss of his personal dignity. I could tell this hurt him more than the thought of dying itself. We couldn't really comfort him with this. So when it was time to change his diapers we just did it in a matter-of-fact way, without making a big deal out of it. It was all we could do.
Fortunately I guess, Dad's awareness of himself and what was happening to him faded very quickly. For the last week he sort of recognized our faces and voices, but not where he was or why. He started to refuse to eat or drink, and per his previous instructions we did not have a feeding tube or IV inserted. We gave him whatever he asked for, and did our best to see that he was as comfortable and pain-free as possible.
I could not help but wonder at the time what it would have been like to have someone like President Bush and the whole fucking Congress of the U.S. come in and try and force Dad to have a feeding tube against his will, like they did with Terry Schiavo. God those motherfuckers really raped her when they did that. It would have taken the last remaining shred of dignity and control over his life that my Dad had remaining to himself. Sometimes the right to die really is the right to live, the right to choose how you want to live, no matter for how short a time you have remaining to you.
Current Location:Home in Los Angeles Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: Gershwin: My Man's Gone Now. (from Porgy and Bess)
What is it with all the people trooping through the house today. Can't they leave a dying man (and his family) in peace? Yes, Yes, I know you all love him, thats why you haven't talked to him in a year. Now get the fuck out of here.
Sigh. Dad fell again. Betty had stepped outside for a quick smoke and Dad was asleep in his bed. I was in my office on the computer when I heard a big thump and and I ran out and Dad was laying on his side in his bedroom.
He did not hurt himself though other than a bit of bruising. But we finally just could not stand it anymore and called the hospice people in the middle of the night. It was midnight when he fell and they send a nurse out who got there at 1am. She was really sweet and hand on a shirt that said "I love soldier boys". Ha, I thought, so do I.
Anyway she checked him out and gave him some morphine. Thats apparently good stuff. We had tried it with him before in pill form but it seemed to make him itch. This was in liquid form though and has not had any side affects other than making him sleepy.
She decided to cathertize him. We should have done this before but he was really resistant. Holy Cow! He let out about 1200 milleters of urine. The nurse said that normally we hold about 70. He must have been so uncomfortable, but as usual he didn't tell us about it. At any rate, now he sleeps at night and does not get up for any midnight wanderings. He has not fallen since then. We also got the hospice people to put a different kind of railing than the kind they orginally put on the bed. This is longer and he has a more difficult time lowering it and so makes enough racket so that either Betty or I hear him trying to get up. We also hired someone to watch him during the day which really helps, we have just been so burnt out. I haven't been to work in two weeks and Betty and i have just been trying to take care of Dad.
Hopefully we are at the point where I can go back to work. But I really don't want to because my Dad is fading fast and I feel like I should be there becuase I'm not going to have any more chances otherwise. But if I don't go to work I don't get paid and I need the money to pay his mortgage. So I will try to go into work tommorrow. Fortunatly there is a lot I can do from home.
I was in bed asleep a few days ago and got woken up by a loud crash, I ran out of my room there was Dad, staggering in the hallway knocking things off of the table. Sigh. Again.
He has been getting up in the middle of the night and trying to go to the bathroom. He has fallen every night. The hospice people brought over a bed with railings but he gets past them. Betty, (his girlfriend) and I try to help him each time he gets up becasue he staggers around like a drunken ballerina. He does not appear to have very much of a sense of balance, and his vision is fucked up too. His eyes no longer move in concert together. This is because of the degeneration of his brain into white matter they doctors tell us.
Betty and I stay up and help him each time he gets up but we have been doing that for 4 days straight and we are so burnt out that we can't stay awake or alert enough to know when he is getting up.
Its funny but after I went back to bed after the episode a few days ago I had a wierd dream. In it I was crying and David showed up and started talking to me. I can't remember all of what he said but it was something sassy along the lines of stop feeling sorry for yourself. In the dream I remember saying "Hey if your my fucking guardian angel why don't you send me over a gentle dark-haired bruiser to hold me on nights like these?, you know, 6 feet 2 with eyes of blue?". David leans over and gently strokes my face, and says, "Shut the fuck up and go to sleep you dufus". So I grab my pillow tighter and do exactly that.
In November of 2005 my Dad told me that he a tumor in his lungs and that it was malignant. The doctors said at the time his prognosis was about 5 years. It looks like they may have been a little too optimistic.
He's gone through chemo, and radiation. He's had his chest cancer disappear and reappear. He's had tumors in his brain, and had them disappear also. But the radiation that cured him of the cancer is whats going to end up killing him. Scar tissue is beginning to rapidly develop, even though his treatment was many months ago. I guess there is apparently Grey brain matter and white brain matter. White brain matter is basically not part of the functional brain. My Dad's brain is rapidly converting from Grey brain matter into white brain matter. His brain is basically dissolving, atrophying at a rapid rate. 1 month ago, he was up and around, and leading a more or less normal life of a retired man. He memory was for shit, but he was still reasonably sharp witted. The lights were still on when you looked into his eyes. Now they have begun to dim.
Two weeks ago he began to have trouble with his appetite. He gradually stopped eating and drinking. He became weak and bed-ridden and started losing weight rapidly. We do as much as we can to stuff food and water down his gullet but he just won't eat.
So this is the beginning of the end. He is in bed all the time now, and he doesn't make very much sense. We took him to his oncologist cancer doctor who had only seen him just two weeks before. The doctor was shocked and literally turned pale. Since I imagine he sees dying patients with cancer all the time Dad looked pretty bad. He told us that there was really not anything anymore that we can do but keep him comfortable. Sot that is what we are doing.
We are starting the long watch you make when someone you love is slipping out of this life. I remember this with David, my love. Its different with Dad I have to say. If only because David was 26 and my Dad is 68. David became infected with HIV the 2nd time he ever had sex. My Dad developed cancer after a lifetime of smoking like a chimney. My Dads older brother is 75 and looks 55, my Dad when he was 65 looked like he was 85. Great stuff smoking. People who smoke are idiots.
Unfortunately my Dad is one of those idiots. Yesterday he started having his first occasion of incontinence, meaning he shits in his pants now. I had to go out and buy a plastic sheet cover for his mattress, and a bunch of Depends. Today he is ready for another box of them. I got my Dad a wheelchair and a walker. I don't think he will use them much because he won't get out of bed. Not can't- Just won't. He doesn't have his sense of balance anymore and he has fallen several times trying to make to the bathroom. (and failing). He can't bathe himself, we have to do it for him. I love my Dad a lot, but I don't really feel so sorry for him. How can I feel sorry for him when he has had such a long good life and my David died when he was 26?
Current Mood: confused Current Music: Tears for Fears: Pale Shelter
I caught sight of my reflection I caught it in the window I saw the darkness in my heart I saw the signs of my undoing They had been there from the start And the darkness still has work to do The knotted chord's untying They're heated and they're holy Oh they're sitting there on high So secure with everything they're buying
[Chorus:] In the blood of Eden Lie the woman and the man With the man in the woman And the woman in the man In the blood of Eden Lie the woman and the man We wanted the union Oh the union of the woman The woman and the man
My grip is surely slipping I think I've lost my hold Yes, I think I've lost my hold I cannot get insurance anymore They don't take credit, only gold Is that a dagger or a crucifix I see You hold so tightly in your hand And all the while the distance grows between you and me I do not understand
[Chorus]
At my request, you take me in In that tenderness, I am floating away No certainty, nothing to rely on Holding still for a moment What a moment this is Oh for a moment of forgetting, a moment of bliss Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
I can hear the distant thunder Of a million unheard souls Of a million unheard souls Watch each one reach for creature comfort For the filling of their holes
In the blood of Eden Lie the woman and the man With the man in the woman And the woman in the man In the blood of Eden We wanted the union Of the woman and the man
In the blood of Eden Lie the woman and the man I feel the man in the woman And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden Lie the woman and the man I feel the man in the woman And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden We've done everything we can In the blood of Eden Saw the end as we began With the man in the woman And the woman in the man It was all for the union Oh, the union of the woman, the woman and the man.
[extra lyrics from the "film mix"]
The blood of eden keeps running through me running through my veins the blood of eden keeps rushing through me when I'm sure there's none that remains the blood of eden keeps running through me I can feel it in my bones that blood of eden keeps rushing through me taking back what it owns
I stood in this sun sheltered place 'Til I could see the face behind the face All that had gone before had left no trace
Down by the railway siding In our secret world, we were colliding All the places we were hiding love What was it we were thinking of?
So I watch you wash your hair Underwater, unaware And the plane flies through the air Did you think you didn't have to choose it That I alone could win or lose it In all the places we were hiding love What was it we were thinking of?
In this house of make believe Divided in two, like Adam and Eve You put out and I recieve
[Chorus:] Down by the railway siding In our secret world, we were colliding In all the places we were hiding love What was it we were thinking of?
Oh the wheel is turning spinning round and round And the house is crubling but the stairways stand
With no guilt and no shame, no sorrow or blame Whatever it is, we are all the same
Making it up in our secret world [x3] Shaking it up Breaking it up Making it up in our secret world
Seeing things that were not there On a wing on a prayer In this state of disrepair
[Chorus]
Shh, listen...
Current Location:Work Current Mood: pfft! Current Music: Peter Gabriel
Gay Rights "Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" - Ernest Gaines
We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on livejournal. There is no bribe of a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights". If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this. Thanks.
As a gay man, I don't really in "gay rights". I believe in human rights. Rights inherent in the simple dignity of being a human being, as granted by the Creator. Those kind of rights can't be voted in or out by my government or by my neighbors. My dignity as a human being can be recognized or not by others, but it can never be taken away from me.
No matter how many times you water-board me. ;-)
Current Location:Work Current Mood: thankful Current Music: Orbital: One Perfect Sunrise
I looked up at the tallest building Felt it falling down I could feel my balance shifting Everything was moving around These streets so fixed and solid Ah shimmering haze And everything that I relied on disappeared
Downside up, upside down Take my weight from the ground Falling deep in the sky Slipping in the unknonwn All the strangers look like family All the family looks so strange The only constant I am sure of Is this accelerating rate of change
Downside up, upside down Take my weight off the ground Falling deep in the sky Slipping in the unknown
I stand here Watch you spinning Until I am drawn in A centripetal force You pull me in
Pull me in, Pull me in ovo, ovo, ovo
Downside up Upside down Take my weight off the ground Falling deep in the sky Slipping into the unknown
-Peter Gabriel from The Nest that Sailed the Sky.
This was actually written in 2000 for the Y2K cultural celebrations at the Millenium Dome in Britain.
Current Location:Work Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Peter Gabriel Live
Friday night activities Sigh. Home from a long day at work. I hate it when my boss sends me snotty e-mails.
Well...
I could do the laundry, clean the kitchen, or play City of Heroes. Hmmm. Tough choice. I'll take heroic daring-do over household chores any day. Too the errr... Gryph-Cave!
Now I just need a boy robin to hang out with for some male-bonding.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
gryphmon's journal
contemplative
melancholy
exhausted
grumpy
numb
sleepy
confused
determined
thankful
distressed
POW!... BAMF!... CRACK!