Battle for life

I wanted to write something, but I have no idea how a post like this is supposed to be written. There are no right words, there is no comfort, there are no answers. Just tons of tears and a profound sense of sorrow, deep like some hell pit and the smell of hospital disinfectants that haunt my days and nights wherever I move. I am afraid to type these words, but I have to – my father is most probably dying.

What appeared to be just a battle to get him out of diabetes induced state that went widely out of control and progressed to ketoacidosis, eventually turned into an ominous discovery of cancerous lesions in his abdomen. We still haven’t found the big one, THE ONE responsible for these lesions as he is still too weak for further aggressive testing, but doctors think that considering the general state of his health that this might not even be important, that it would be just a name to put on the type of cancer he has. For these doctors my dad is not the person I know everything about, he’s just a cancer case. They left me, mentally not very stable person, standing on my two feet while they were telling me these words that sounded so unreal and out of place and put on me the pressure of choice to decide how much of what they think so far I will tell him. If anybody out there knows the way how to lie to a retired medical doctor about his state of health, please tell me how to do it. He knows too much about medicine and suspects quite enough to be fooled around, yet I still have to give him a grain of hope so that he continues to battle for his life. In order to do it, I’d need some hope myself. I need to be strong. Have you ever seen a strong PD sufferer? Till several days ago, I hardly and rarely went further than around my building. All of a sudden, I’m needed – to figure things out, make appointments, find ways how to put him into a hospital in a tragically poor country with one of the worst medical mafias in the world, be the one to whom doctors speak, run around to buy medication and other things he needs, and that’s precisely what I’m totally unfit for in the first place. I’m somehow doing all this and falling apart, but it seems to me that such situations simply numb you to the point that you can process them without going crazy for good. I was managing my PD battles precisely because I developed mechanisms of convincing myself hard that all that dreadful anxiety was not real, that it was bogus, that it can’t harm me. Anxiety and dread I’m feeling now is not much different from what I’m used to, but this time it’s not bogus. Now it’s very real and I can’t do anything about it, which in turn scares me to death. This realization alternates with derealization all the time. What is going to happen? How will he handle it? How much time do we have left? What has happened and how? How are such things processed and survived? How will i survive all this? And of all diseases out there, why cancer?

My dad has been a support in my life in different ways and now life is going to get abnormally tough, change drastically for worse, especially because PD makes me disabled in many ways and I don’t have help. Everything loses meaning and importance. When I think of my recent digital battles, I fell like screaming – how could I’ve been so stupid to get worked up for something that seems like a complete nonsense now? All those things that miss in my life due to PD now seem way much bigger and worse. Who’s gonna give me a hand when my time comes? I don’t have anybody apart from my mom and dad… I would give my stupid PD limited life this very instant to extend his much more meaningful one if things could work that way. What’s life’s purpose anyway and why for some people it has to end in terrible suffering?

I’ve said many times that whenever I start something meaningful for myself in these last years, the moment I try to do something at least a bit beautiful, I somehow get drastically punished for some reason. I took the camera out all right, but what am I supposed to do with it now? I started blogging and found some very precious joys in this special community – I didn’t get many followers but I did make here a couple of very special friendships, big hugs and so many special thanks especially to Judy, Jim and Tammy – I love you guys, your amazing blogs inspired me to start doing something artistic again and your wonderful comments gave me strength not to abandon my newly developed blogging path. I don’t know how to blog now and if I can still do it, if I’m not here it’s because I’m doing really bad, not because I forgot you or this tiny blogging space of mine.

Life’s been very cruel on me, I need those closed fists of mine now more than ever. What’s more, I’ll hate my birthday now for as long as I live, it was on August 16th that my dad took the results of his first analyses and completely forgot about me and my birthday. My only wish while I blew my two tiny cake candles was for him to get better again, but it seems that such wishes never come true. I tried to stay positive in the following days till we got him into the hospital, I wanted to show you my first zinnias’ photos because I knew that later I wouldn’t have strength for it. Or better said, I still hoped that he just needed to be switched to insulin and that things would get better. I’m desperately searching for some grain of hope now, against all odds. It seems that these are the only battles I was born for, those against all odds.

Dear God, please help me, I beg you. Now it’s all in your hands.