A Bleak Christmas

I've been here a week. And I'm definitely the wrong person for this job.

I came to St. Louis a week early so I could help out with my dad's cancer treatments. It didn't start off well. When my parents pulled up to the curb at the St. Louis Airport, I could tell immediately that my dad was altered. He couldn't hold his neck straight and he was in so much pain.

I wanted to do everything I could to help, I really want to help out. But the very next morning, as I offered to help out with dad's breakfast, he started harping on me about not cutting his orange right. He turned to my mom and said, "Can't you give simple instructions?" I had been considering staying for several months to help out, after that comment, I reconsidered.

Taking Bianca out of her kindergarten and putting her in a kindergarten in Columbia would be hard, but doable. Putting my writing on halt, and hoping they'd still want me in February or March would be hard, but doable. Finding a new OBGYN while I'm here would be more expensive and a little bit of a hassle, but doable. Finding someone to watch my dog while I'm here and Eric's in India would be a task, but again Doable. But not being appreciated is hard for me.

I've been driving dad to work every day. Sticking around while he gets some stuff done at the office. Taking him to radiation treatments and MRIs at St. Anthony's Hospital about a half an hour away, and he's always giving me "constructive criticism" about how I should drive--which lane I should be in, and when I should drive slower or faster. It's grating me. I wish I could let it slide. After all, I know he's on morphine and percoset for the pain and he's not feeling well. And I'm trying.

But I'm just not optimistic about what's going to happen here. I feel like life's kicked me around so much, I don't expect much. My dad, on the other hand, does. His doctor told him that one out of one hundred cancer patients are healed not by any medical way, but just a miraculous healing. The radiation isn't supposed to kill the cancer; it's supposed to help with his shoulder pain. The chemotherapy pills he's taking aren't supposed to kill the cancer; there's just a 40 percent chance it will stop the progress of the cancer. The outcome looks bleak. But he's so enthusiastic that he thinks he'll get this miraculous healing.

I wish I could agree, but I can't. I just stay quiet. I worry that he'll lose all hope if he doesn't get this miraculous healing. He's expecting it now. And I'm not. Why would God let me keep my dad?

Yesterday, my dad had a brain MRI. The doctors think the cancer is in his spinal cord (hence, his stoop and being unable to hold his neck up). They think it may have spread to his brain. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen.

My sister Susannah's moving out here now. Looks like she'll take over, and they won't need me anymore. I should be relieved, grateful, something. But I can't feel.

I wish I had no presents to buy. I wish Christmas just wouldn't come this year. I wish we could just wallow in our misery. Maybe he'll get a Christmas present--a miraculous Christmas healing. But I'm not optimistic, and I'm not expecting it.

Call me realistic, call me pessimistic, call me a scrooge.

A Simple Balance Sheet

It's five years this month. Since I've been so-called "cancer free." I guess that makes me eligible to have my face plastered on a bill board with "Five years cancer free" as the caption. My friend Kari and I used to joke about being up there together, as she became five-years-cancer-free last year.

But another person who is five-years-cancer-free this month is my nephew, Collin. He was five years old when he was diagnosed with a Wilm's Tumor, the size of a basketball, they said. (Why is it they always compare tumors to sports balls? My liposarcoma [tumor] was the size of a football, they said.) But after months of torturous radiation and chemotherapy, he pulled through.

So, I guess we should be celebrating. After all, this is the offical medical time that doctors consider you healthy. But this week, we found out my dad (and Collin's grandpa) has cancer. Not just any cancer, but bone cancer that resulted from a kidney (with cancer) that was partially removed nearly two years ago. Guess they should have taken the whole thing. He didn't need the other one anyway.

I've been trying to make sense of all this to no avail. Why my dad? Why our family? Can we handle yet another tragedy? To borrow from one of my favorite books, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, "Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't he read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He were managing a corporation, the things He allowed to happen . . ." So maybe I'm being dramatic. But all the world seems unfair to me now.

And then I remembered something my mom told me while we were waiting at the hospital to see if Miranda was going to make it through the brain swelling in the aftermath of the car accident--that my dad plead with God to trade her life for his. But it didn't work. She didn't live through it.

This got me thinking. Had my dad already tried that when Collin was sick? Did he offer himself then so that Collin would pull through his grade-four cancer? Had God accepted his offer?

Yesterday, I found out that my dad had offered himself up when Collin was sick. Maybe that's why God wouldn't accept him for Miranda. Maybe he had already agreed to give Collin back his chance for my dad's life. Timing seems a little ironic to me. Exactly five years ago.

I don't know if God works this way. But I can't help wondering.

The verdict's in:

We had the ultrasound this morning. We're having a girl! I'm so happy!

Here's an ultrasound photo. If you look hard, you can make our her profile. I think she kinda looks like me. What do you think?