No this is not going to be a therapy column… or even
a downer… I hope not. Hope has taken on a strange quality
to me lately… I actually need it.
Sure I’ve “needed” it in the past. Kind of like you
need ice cream once in a while.
“Oh please, God, I hope I get that job, gig, girl, comic
book” whatever.
But these days there isn’t even the opener of “Oh God.”
It’s gotten way past that point. It’s just
“I hope they’re okay.”
Let’s give you some background:
My parents live on the East Coast, and I live out here
in sunny, too goddamn liberal for its own good, slacker,
northern California. My parents have been out here once
in the 4 years I’ve lived here. They trained across America
on Amtrak for their 30th wedding anniversary
and stayed in a big hotel on Union Square in San Francisco.
They set foot in my apartment, in the Mission District
in San Francisco, once. My mother isn’t too fond of my
living situations, namely that they are cheap, and I don’t
take all that good care of them. And, granted, when they
came out (2 years after graduating college), I was not
taking care of my apartment, in Albany, especially well.
And now both of them suffer from cancer. A lot of my
family has had this disease… so many in fact that I consider
myself an armchair oncologist. So much so that when someone
else’s family get afflicted with it I feel totally fine
giving advice, dispensing moral thoughts on what can be
expected of the death and grieving process, and fucking
prescribing MRIs and what kind and what level of toxicity
of the chemo that that person’s loved one should be receiving.
This is my mother’s third bout with breast cancer (second
mastectomy, second full reconstruction surgery both scheduled
the same day).
My father’s story is one of raging disease combating
modern science.
One day my father wakes up and has some numbness in his
legs. Batteries of tests ensue in which nothing, nada,
zipola is found. Then just because one of the wacky tests
needs it they take some spinal fluid. And there they
are floating in his spinal fluid, cancer cells.
Traditional chemo starts, fails. Direct injection chemo
to his fucking spine starts, fails. And then the juggernaught
of modern science steps in.
No more of this standard pussy shit.
They drain his spinal fluid—that’s drain, as in take
it all fucking out—irradiate it separately while they
bombard the rest of his body with gamma rays (why isn’t
he the Incredible Hulk?), so that his bone marrow will
create super T cells which they harvest (I love this oncologist
language). Then they pump his “clean” fluid back into
his spine after adding these harvested super T cells to
it and make him wear a mask in public because his immune
system is that of a newborn, and declare him in remission.
Two months later, at Christmas, he can’t feel his legs
again.
And just like that modern science bites the big one,
my mother’s breast cancer returns (or her sympathy cancer
as I like to call it) and the score board reads:
CANCER: 2 (or 3 or 5 or 778,897,000 depending how you
look at it)
MORRISONS: 0
So they put my father back on injected chemo (that’s
right into his fucking spine) just to keep his nephrology
at bay (that’s a fancy oncologist word for not being able
to feel your legs) twice a month and give my dad 15 months.
Are you ready for the fucking kicker?
So my mother’s sympathy cancer shows up, and all of a
sudden my dad’s spinal fluid is clear. No more cancer
cells. Clean. And he’s been clean for the last three
injections. So they move him down to one injection a
month… but have not declared him in remission.
So I hope. I hope like I’ve never hoped before. I hope
it stays away. I hope by removing two pounds of my mother’s
flesh, it stays away from her too. I hope like a man
with a gun to his head hopes that the fucking barrel won’t
spin, breaking the firing pin and jamming the gun. I
hope so much that I sweat. I hope so much that I think
I am shitting hope. I hope so much that it is hard to
stop thinking about hope when I start.
And I hope that I won’t have to move home.
MY
PARENTS ARE DYING