Ironman

Dear Dad,

The chemo and radiation is affecting your brain. You keep forgetting things. But not like the normal stuff that I’ve gotten used to you forgetting, you know like when you try to remember the name of a movie director. You say What’s his name? Umm Jason help me out here?

That’s not what worries me now.

Last night we were watching Iron Man and today you don’t remember it. Later we’re watching it again for a second time. When I tell you that we watched this the night before, you shake your head. You look at me like you’re trying to remember and your eyes light up for a second and I think you have it, but then you go back to shaking your head. You don’t have it. The doctors say that this is fairly common in older patients that undergo treatment and also because of the location of the radiation treatments being close to your brain. The tough part is a radiation treatment a day, five days a week with only the weekends off. It is hard getting you to keep going. Yesterday when I said it was time to go, you got quiet and like a child whispered Can we just skip it today?

On your second chemo you get the drug Cisplatin, a small amount cloistered with liters of IV fluids to help the body deal with the toxicity of the event. The fluids drip all day as we sit in a room full of other cancer patients. Afterwards, I take you home and you want to watch a movie. You want to watch Iron Man because you haven’t seen it yet.

Live Through This

Dear Dad,

It’s been a while since I’ve written. We’ve been busy with your cancer treatments. It continues to be very hard to deal with your illness on a number of levels. It’s left me scrambling to find the time to drive us to the cadre of doctors spread out over Castro Valley and San Leandro.

I am taking leave from work and that should help. Have you heard of Family Medical Leave? Basically without retaliation from my employer I am allowed to take up to 12 weeks off in a calendar year to care for a relative or spouse or even bond with a new child and 6 weeks of that can be paid, although at a reduced percentage of my annual income.

Once that’s squared away I should be able to find more time. It’s tough to live through this, tougher than I imagined. On my way back home tonight, I wound up eating a burrito at a quarter to 10 and I know that tomorrow I'll have to be up early to pick you up again. It’s the little things like eating right that get neglected.

You’re starting to worry me though, because you began ever so softly to become ambivalent about the prognosis and treatment. More and more you are becoming disorganized and confused, it feels like time is running out.