Darker things

I visited the 'My Cancer' blog on NPR again today. Breifly, it's a blog that was started by Leroy Sievers, a NPR correspondent, when he found out that he had cancer. Colorectal, I believe. The cancer metastasized and Leroy fought it day-to-day, blogging his valiant attempts. He passed away in August. It was odd, because I actually stopped reading the blog for a while when I was out of the country and I remember re-visiting the blog to find only a two sentence entry from Leroy that day. An unspoken air of endgame hung thick as I read his brief entry that day.

I stopped visiting the blog after his death thinking that the blog would be archived and nothing else would be added to it. To my surprise, Leroy's wife has continued to keep up the blog, now documenting her struggles with trying to move on after the death of her husband. It is crushingly heartbreaking to watch one human try to comprehend what to do now that their partner of many years is no longer around. She talks about going through her husband's medical supplies, about the bedpans, the medicines, the other supplies that inevitably make their way into one's house and one takes care of a loved one in the final days of their life.

Transferrance is a bitch. I forsee the brief respites that I will get to have while my dad sleeps, when I will sip on a hot cup of tea or coffee, surrounding by iv drips, other medical supplies, plates with half eaten foodstuffs because he's losing his apetite. Five, ten minutes before he wakes up, in pain, maybe short of breath, I don't know. I've seen enough heart failure patients professionally to know how this endgame is played. No queening of pawns or sudden checks, just the inexorable march of a disease process against a wounded king. These days are ahead; I have the days now to prepare for them.