Had a hell of a 'phone conversation with my father today.
Although I have told my family about my medical condition, I have soft peddled on how bad it is. However I assumed they realised it would end up with medical treatment and an early(ish) death. It has got to the point where the medical treatment is likely to start within a year and since this will effect visiting my father I thought I had better start preparing him for it, so I told him a few more of the details. Turned out he was a lot more ignorant of the situation that I thought. Up 'till then he had been under the impression that my condition could be treated with pills, and the worst it would do would be to make me less agile, with a risk of sight loss. It won't. Depending on the treatment they decide is best for me it will either mean me going into hospital for dialysis every other day (which will mean when I visit him I will have to make arrangements with the hospital near where he lives to do this) or a home treatment, that I don't yet fully understand myself but will involve me setting up my bedroom with expensive medical equipment, and when I visit him, I'll have to take it all with me and temporarily convert his spare bedroom into a medical room. He took the news worse than I did. And he still only knows part of it.
It was not until a few hours after I put down the 'phone that I realised what had probably caused it to upset him so much:
I am now older than my mother was when she died. And although my diagnosis is a lot better than hers, and my treatment, I am told, will not be painful (apart from some initial surgery) my father was probably thinking of when he had been driving my mother into hospital for regular chemo, which was bad, very bad back then (she once told me after the chemo was over and we thought she was in remission that if she needed to go back on chemo she would choose to die instead). I'm
not looking at treatment any way as bad as that - after the initial surgery the most painful part will be a constant course of injections, and as I am already on insulin I'm used to that, but I think the image going through Dad's head is of my mother's suffering.
I have no idea what to say to him.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greenguy
I urge you to pick a team, grow your hockey playoff beard  |
A "hockey beard" ain't going to happen over here in England. Because over here hockey is a women's sport, mostly played by posh schoolgirls. I cannot see them growing a beard (and even if they do, the girls who play tend to be from families rich enough to be able to afford electrolysis).
