Checking Out

The next morning was the first oncologist appointment for my dad.  We were encouraged by how he seemed to be feeling better. He still wasn’t eating much but as those two days in the hospital progressed it looked as if he was getting stronger.   However, as we pulled into the hospital check out drive I noticed he was standing kinda hunched over again.  He got into the car gingerly and said he was feeling pretty nauseous.  All that supposed progress in the hospital was no longer.

As we drove out to the appointment we passed the county fair, it was to open that weekend.  I suddenly remembered a period in my early teens where I looked forward to that event.  The rides were exactly the same, you could already smell the mix of sausages and funnel cakes.  This, of course, did not help my father’s stomach and he looked on the verge of retching.  I tried to take their minds off of it by reminding them that mom’s photos were up for judging this year and when he felt a bit stronger we should go see them.  Unfortunately I think all I was doing was annoying them because it definitely seemed as if they were both very much on edge.  It saddened me to see them snipping at each other instead of just saying, “I am sorry, I am frustrated and scared and don’t know how to handle this situation.”

My dad said he thought he was going to throw up so we pulled into an abandoned hotel parking lot as quickly as possible.   There were three men outside of it, one looking like he was trying to show the property in hopes of selling it. “I am not going to puke on this man’s sale!,” my dad said.  So we pulled out and continued on, trying to make it to the doctor’s on time and intact.

We actually ended up arriving a bit early and I requested to pull in to the gas station to grab a quick beverage.  It turns out even though my dad had been on an IV drip he really wasn’t drinking too much other liquids, really wasn’t eating and turns out had only had some coffee that morning.  Now, I have had a sensitive stomach for quite a bit and know all of those things together make for a very acidic stomach which equals pain and nausea.   As I was getting myself a sparkling water I thought maybe if I got him some sweet tea, some crackers and since he always got some – a few lottery tickets.  Maybe this could cheer him up and make him feel better.  He always likes the scratchers, even won ten thousand dollars one time.

I walked out with my purchases and saw dad throwing up fairly violently behind the car.   I went over to mom and tried to say a few comforting words to her, but she was too upset to hear it.  The thing that was making her so distraught was seeing her husband in pain and not knowing what to do to help it, I can certainly understand that. I know if I were to see my husband even one tenth of what I was seeing my father go through I would be having a full on panic attack 24/7.

When my father finally felt a bit better we headed the block and a half to the oncologist’s office.  As we sat in the burnt orange colored waiting room I started watching the TV in front of me, but the super perky girls giving you healthy recipes and looking way too positive for their own good were getting on my last nerve.  All around me were folks in various of stages of cancer.  The super skinny and sad looking, the resigned slow walkers with scarves covering their heads where their hair used to be and the ones who looked like they were actually fairly healthy (comparatively speaking I guess)  Is this to be my parent’s lives now? Just a series of burnt orange waiting rooms?

We finally got called into a patient room for our appointment.  The doctor seemed nice enough, reiterated what we had figured out by now – the biopsy had revealed Stage 3-3b Squamous Cell Carcinoma lung cancer.  We asked several questions which he took time to answer and finally my dad looked at him and said, “is it terminal?”

“No,” the doctor said.

You could tell that was all my dad wanted to hear.   I was a bit confused, having looked up the high calcium symptom and seeing nothing but negative diagnoses related to it why he would tell my father this but then again I reasoned, perhaps the doctor thinks it could just be a symptom and not a sign of the end.  I certainly don’t have a medical degree in oncology so who am I to question this?

My dad’s mood was visibly lifted as we headed home and chatted about what we could have for dinner that night that he might like.  We passed the fair again on the way back and dad mentioned he would like to go there when it opened to see mom’s pictures displayed, see if she won a ribbon.   He seemed optimistic and was acting like he was feeling better physically.

It’s amazing what words can do to your body and mind, you always hear that saying “mind over matter,” well, I was definitely seeing the effect of this more and more on my father.