Friday, Jun. 10, 2005 - 11:57 a.m.

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How I dread the phone ringing late in the night. My sister, 11pm, confirming what we knew before I left Sydney, that Dad is no longer capable of managing even in assisted living and when he�s �well� enough to leave hospital he�ll be moved to a nursing home.

The cancer has spread to his spine and he�s lost the use of his right leg, which means he�s basically unable to walk now, but he probably still has to endure months of this lurching between intense pain and being too stoned to speak. We talked a bit whilst I was there about how much he is hating losing control of his life, how frustrated he was that his body just didn�t get better, from the infections that he seems to have all the time to the cancer itself. I had no consolation but to listen, my sympathy sounding, even to me, unable to touch his sadness.

After speaking to my sister I called Dad at the hospital, I expect it was about an hour after his first dose of hydromorphone for the day. He managed one sentence then twenty minutes of breathing interspersed with the odd unintelligible attempt at speaking. I couldn�t get him to rouse, so I finally said good night to a silent phone and hung up on him. I�d feel less shit about that if I thought he was actually unaware, but at some stage he would have come back to consciousness with a phone beeping in his ear and be very hard on himself for having drifted off.

Of the few people here who know the details, I wish they�d stop saying it must be so hard for you being so far away, because I don�t understand what they mean when all I really feel is guilt.


back - fore


Stuff what is good and makes me happy: - Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008
Not really an update. - Monday, Jan. 22, 2007
Don't know when I'll be back again. - Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006
- - Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006
The drugs don't work. - Monday, Oct. 23, 2006


details
voyeurism
self-indulgence for all





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