![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about the hip replacement surgery that my father is not having today, because they have to take care of the blockage they found to his heart, instead. My father growing old has taken me oddly by surprise. My father becoming frail is more than I can wrap my mind around.
Two months ago, he was walking 5 miles a day on a treadmill. Now he can barely walk at all. They said a new hip would make him almost as good as new, so he scheduled the surgery. During his pre-op exam, they found a problem with his heart though, so they need to stick a tiny camera on a stick and take a look around the artery to see what's in there and then treat him accordingly.
He wasn't hopeful about the hip surgery having the desired effect, in the first place.
"I bet it doesn't make any difference," he told me this weekend, wincing as he worked his way across the room with the aid of a cane. "I don't even know why I'm doing it."
This is how my father is. Every glass is always half empty with him, and soon it will be completely empty and we are all destined to die of thirst. He likes to expect the worst, so that whatever happens will come as a great relief. When he is watching a football game and the other team scores in the first quarter, he always shouts, "Damn! We're going to lose! I should probably just turn off the TV right now so I don't have to see!" Then he finishes watching the game with a scowl on his face, which only dissolves when his team finally wins in the end. The one time he didn't expect the worse was with my mother's cancer: he always expected her to beat it and pull through, and made no plans for what to do if she didn't. This proved to be a mistake. Now he makes sure to always expect the worst as a sort of insurance against it actually happening.
To his mind, the worst he could expect was that the surgery would not fix his leg so that he could walk on it. He forgot to consider that all the poking and prodding they do before a surgery might find something not just inconvenient and painful like a bad hip, but deadly like a bad heart. It never occurred to me, either. Most of the people on his side of the family live for about 100 years or so, so I assumed he would, too. In fact, I counted on it. There are still unresolved issues between my father and me, and we need a couple more decades to iron everything out. Suddenly having to face my father's mortality is like a kick in the stomach.
My stepmother, That Woman My Father is Married To, called me yesterday and let me know what was happening. He voice was low and strained, not unlike when she first told me that her grandson, Reese, had kidney cancer.*
"I think this is a blessing in disguise," That Woman said, "If he didn't need the hip replacement, they might not have found this until it was too late. This will all work out for the best."
He is scheduled for the heart catheterization on Monday. In the meanwhile, he is being forced to swallow his pride and start using a walker to get around, something he has been resisting. I am worried that his despair may be even more debilitating than his hip and more dangerous that the blockage in his artery. I told her I hoped she was right.
"Keep me posted, please," I asked her.
"I will, Hon," she said.
The term of endearment caught me off guard. In the almost 20 years we have known each other, she has never called me by one before. I wondered if, for a second, she forgot who she was talking to. When she began dating my father, everyone told her that I was the apple of his eye and that he would do anything for me. As a result, while she always treated my brother's kindly, she regarded me as a threat to be neutralized. My fall from grace in my father's eyes around that time was a convenient opportunity that she exploited to its maximum benefit. Only in recent years has she softened toward me. There is still no love lost between us, but at least the open animosity is gone. This makes events like Thanksgiving dinner a lot easier for me to endure.
Now I am left to worry and wait for my father's situation to unfold. The whole thing of going in to fix one thing, only to discover a whole new, bigger problem awakens an unpleasant déjà vu in me. When I was 14, my mother went into the hospital for a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, to see that the breast cancer she was supposed to be free of didn't come back. While he had her on the table the surgeon found a malignant lymph node, and a few months later she was gone. A familiar sense of dread has settled over me. Of course, it could all be me forcing myself to see the glass as half empty so that the universe will be fooled into proving me wrong by restoring the old man's leg and opening the way to his heart.
I guess that despite our differences, I can't escape the fact that I am my father's daughter.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
* As of last month, he's now done with chemo and cancer free. His assessment of the whole thing was, "Cancer is bad. Chemo is bad. I'm glad they're gone." I assume he's hoping, along with the rest of us, that his 3rd year of life will be less stressful than his 2nd, and will involve a lot fewer doctors.
Two months ago, he was walking 5 miles a day on a treadmill. Now he can barely walk at all. They said a new hip would make him almost as good as new, so he scheduled the surgery. During his pre-op exam, they found a problem with his heart though, so they need to stick a tiny camera on a stick and take a look around the artery to see what's in there and then treat him accordingly.
He wasn't hopeful about the hip surgery having the desired effect, in the first place.
"I bet it doesn't make any difference," he told me this weekend, wincing as he worked his way across the room with the aid of a cane. "I don't even know why I'm doing it."
This is how my father is. Every glass is always half empty with him, and soon it will be completely empty and we are all destined to die of thirst. He likes to expect the worst, so that whatever happens will come as a great relief. When he is watching a football game and the other team scores in the first quarter, he always shouts, "Damn! We're going to lose! I should probably just turn off the TV right now so I don't have to see!" Then he finishes watching the game with a scowl on his face, which only dissolves when his team finally wins in the end. The one time he didn't expect the worse was with my mother's cancer: he always expected her to beat it and pull through, and made no plans for what to do if she didn't. This proved to be a mistake. Now he makes sure to always expect the worst as a sort of insurance against it actually happening.
To his mind, the worst he could expect was that the surgery would not fix his leg so that he could walk on it. He forgot to consider that all the poking and prodding they do before a surgery might find something not just inconvenient and painful like a bad hip, but deadly like a bad heart. It never occurred to me, either. Most of the people on his side of the family live for about 100 years or so, so I assumed he would, too. In fact, I counted on it. There are still unresolved issues between my father and me, and we need a couple more decades to iron everything out. Suddenly having to face my father's mortality is like a kick in the stomach.
My stepmother, That Woman My Father is Married To, called me yesterday and let me know what was happening. He voice was low and strained, not unlike when she first told me that her grandson, Reese, had kidney cancer.*
"I think this is a blessing in disguise," That Woman said, "If he didn't need the hip replacement, they might not have found this until it was too late. This will all work out for the best."
He is scheduled for the heart catheterization on Monday. In the meanwhile, he is being forced to swallow his pride and start using a walker to get around, something he has been resisting. I am worried that his despair may be even more debilitating than his hip and more dangerous that the blockage in his artery. I told her I hoped she was right.
"Keep me posted, please," I asked her.
"I will, Hon," she said.
The term of endearment caught me off guard. In the almost 20 years we have known each other, she has never called me by one before. I wondered if, for a second, she forgot who she was talking to. When she began dating my father, everyone told her that I was the apple of his eye and that he would do anything for me. As a result, while she always treated my brother's kindly, she regarded me as a threat to be neutralized. My fall from grace in my father's eyes around that time was a convenient opportunity that she exploited to its maximum benefit. Only in recent years has she softened toward me. There is still no love lost between us, but at least the open animosity is gone. This makes events like Thanksgiving dinner a lot easier for me to endure.
Now I am left to worry and wait for my father's situation to unfold. The whole thing of going in to fix one thing, only to discover a whole new, bigger problem awakens an unpleasant déjà vu in me. When I was 14, my mother went into the hospital for a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, to see that the breast cancer she was supposed to be free of didn't come back. While he had her on the table the surgeon found a malignant lymph node, and a few months later she was gone. A familiar sense of dread has settled over me. Of course, it could all be me forcing myself to see the glass as half empty so that the universe will be fooled into proving me wrong by restoring the old man's leg and opening the way to his heart.
I guess that despite our differences, I can't escape the fact that I am my father's daughter.
* As of last month, he's now done with chemo and cancer free. His assessment of the whole thing was, "Cancer is bad. Chemo is bad. I'm glad they're gone." I assume he's hoping, along with the rest of us, that his 3rd year of life will be less stressful than his 2nd, and will involve a lot fewer doctors.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 08:27 pm (UTC)Thank you for the thoughts and wishes; they did bring a smile to my face, so now you have an idea of what they are up to...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 08:58 pm (UTC)#2. I'm with That Woman... this is a blessing in disguise. Please keep me posted! Although I haven't seen him in quite a while, I don't like to think about your dad not being around. {{HUG}}
#3. Maybe That Woman has started to realize that, rather than being adversaries, the two women your dad loves most should be allies. I'm sure she's as scared as you are -- perhaps she takes comfort in the fact that she isn't alone.
#4. Please give your dad my best!!!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 09:15 pm (UTC)#2: I don't like my blessings walking around in disguises. It's sneaky and dishonest of them. (*hugs back*)
#3: Because I so dreaded her company, I stopped coming around much, and that hurt my father. I think realized this and backed off. She does care for him.
#4: I will.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 09:16 pm (UTC)We went through a similar scare about 6 years ago with my dad as well. *hugs* to you guys! I hope you get everything worked out. It's hard!!! Dad and I just started getting our relationship out since Jackson was born.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 09:44 pm (UTC)Our Dads are humans, with all the perfection that comes with that. I think some men don't think they are being so obvious when they are playing favorites, or that it matters. My mother's father did the same thing, and my father did it to his children. When I was on the A list, it didn't bother me so much, though I felt bad for my two brothers who were never good enough. Now, those are his two "good" sons who come around and help him out, while his formerly favorite son is estranged from the family. Funny how things work out...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 09:23 pm (UTC)As for the half-full, half-empty thing: I'm always a half-empty person. And the faster the glass empties, the happier I am, because then I have a resolution.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 09:50 pm (UTC)"I'm always a half-empty person. And the faster the glass empties, the happier I am, because then I have a resolution."
I guess your take is: "So this is it: we're out of water and we're going to die. At least I don't have to worry about all this crap anymore..." ;^D
no subject
Date: 2007-10-26 03:14 am (UTC)Yep, that's me in a nutshell. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-26 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-26 09:58 pm (UTC)I don't know, having my stepmom be too nice to me creeps me out just a little. It makes me worry that she might be a pod person and that the only reason I haven't been converted to the race of the pod people is because I have been found to be genetically unworthy.
Boy, I guess I should be more worried about my dad than ever, what with him living with a pod person and all...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-26 04:15 pm (UTC)I'm glad Reese is done with chemo and is cancer-free!!! Funny how kids view things so much differently than the rest of us.
*HUGS NINA EXTRA TIGHT*
no subject
Date: 2007-10-26 10:01 pm (UTC)As for Reese, I think small kids deal with these things better because they don't know any different. He doesn't know about death yet, so it's not a big concern of his. All he knew was that cancer and chemo made him feel sick, and he didn't like them. I can't blame him for being glad that they are gone - I would be, too.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 07:43 pm (UTC)i know the feeling....
i started to read what was behind the cut, but due to how ive been feeling the last couple of days, im not sure i could bring myself to read it all, so i just stopped.... maybe ill be stable enough to return to this post.....
hope all is well
no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 11:52 pm (UTC)