Elisabet and I share our weekly fix of Grey's Anatomy. We have been doing this since the show began and no one knew of the McAdorables. We'd chat afterward or the next day - laughing at her love of McDreamy.
Now the show hits a bit closer to home. The intern known as George has a father who is diagnosed with cancer in his esophagus, which has spread to his stomach. I know what it is like to hear this prognosis in real life. I was almost 14 when Dr. Seisums told my mother my father had Esophageal cancer.
I remember all the tests, the visits to the doctors, my mother and father up in the middle of the night. She is a nurse and fear kept her pacing the floors in the wee hours of the night. My dad would be up consoling her. God, they so loved each other.
I remember the color of the green walls of the doctor's office when the doctor, my mother's friend (and boss) broke the news to her about my father. I remember her sitting down in the chair in his office. She seemed strong and fearless to me. I haven't thought about all of this in years. Tonight on television, Grey's Anatomy brings it all flooding back.
Over 20 years my father's only symptom was chronic heartburn a couple of times a week. When he was diagnosed in 1973, he had stage 3 cancer, which means the disease had already spread from the esophagus to his stomach and surrounding tissues.
The operation my father underwent was to remove the cancerous part of his esophagus and stomach. What was left of his stomach was brought up to meet the shorter part of his esophagus. Back then, the surgery took 22 hours. For many years my father's surgery was the longest known surgery in the history of Memorial hospital. His name was engraved on a small plaque that hung in the wing where cancer surgeries were performed.
In my father's esophagogastrectomy the surgeons removed one-third of his stomach, 8 inches of his esophagus, and the sphincter muscle that controls flow between the esophagus and the stomach. The surgery is a blur in my mind. I remember beingat the hospital, and my mother pacing and pacing but I don't know if I was there the whole 22 hours. I don't know who would have cared for me and my brother. I just don't remember. I remember being scared and praying for my dad. I remember the blurry glow of the ceiling lights down the long hospital corridors. It seems like a distant dream.
I don't ask my mother about it. She would probably tell me, but there is still a part of me that doesn't want to remember. So here I am sitting in my living room watching my father's story on a popular TV show. If the character story is like my father's he will die. Although, my father didn't die on that operating table. He lived another four and a half years slowly dying while the cancer spread little by little throughout his body.
He worked every single day during those four years of death. He roofed our home. He bought me my first car and taught me how to change my own tires. He took us on camping vacations throughout some of the most amazing country in the United States. He came to every ballet performance, took my brother on scouting trips and went dancing with my mother.
Because the sphincter muscle was gone, every time he ate, he would throw up most of what he had eaten. In the four years he fought to stay in our lives he lost 70 pounds, going from looking like Paul Bunyan, the lumber Jack to a tall pencil. Yet, nothing stopped him. Nothing.
By the time I graduated from high school I was convinced he would make it. Convinced he would live to see me graduate from college, walk me down the isle and spoil my children. But if one knows the mortality rate of this cancer back in the 70s, we were lucky to see him after the surgery.
But on a sunny August day, the summer I graduated from high school, two short weeks before I was to begin college, he called out to me in my mind before slipping away to the other side. By the time I got home and made it to his side, he had taken his last breath and was gone forever.
I have never written about his cancer before. I was 18 back then and now I am 46. My father was 45 when he had surgery and died at age 49. In some ways it seems like yesterday. Now that I am the age he was it is hardto believe he was so young. He seemed wise and so much more together than I am at his age. He was larger than life. I have a hard time making it through a day when I am cold.
It's strange how something as simple as a TV show can bring a memory flooding back into view. Thank God Men in Trees is on afterwards and Brian is with his dad. I can recover from this memory...
But I still miss my dad...
Until next time-
C
http://journals.aol.com/rapieress/Aweekinthelife/
Tags: Cancer, Greys Anatomy, surgery, redheads
Thanks for supporting Brian!
