Dealing, Coping And Beating The Big C

My dad died at the age of 53 almost nine years ago now. He was diagnosed with cancer after a exploratory op at Torbay Hospital to see if they could reverse what they did to him after he had Crohn's disease when he was 18 or so. The poor bugger had a colostomy bag for years and years and he was hoping that they could reverse this providing the operation back in the 1960's left enough bits to put back together again. Unfortunately the surgeon didn't like what he saw and took a biopsy. Results came back and he was diagnosed with cancer of the rectum.

I finished University and came back home because I feared the worse and I wanted to be there to support my mum. He was given chemotherapy for six months after surgery to remove as much cancerous tissue as possible. He was then in remission for 6 months . But then the cancer came back and was far more aggressive than it was previously. He hung on grimly for another 8 months and then he went back in hospital for the last time and died a couple of weeks later.

I had a bit of a strange relationship with my father. Up until I was 15 or 16 years old it was pretty good. I'm very grateful that I had a pretty decent childhood. As a family we never had that much money but I can only remember a few occasions when we didn't have a family holiday or didn't have nice toys and things when me and my sister were kids. Both my parents were very supportive.

Then when I turned 15 or 16 something changed in him towards me and I never knew what I did to annoy him so much and I never knew what else I could do to please him or to stop the constant flow of criticism. It was almost like he resented me for getting a few decent GCSEs, then A Levels and then getting a degree but then his mates, his colleagues and my mother told me that he couldn't stop saying how proud he was of me. He had few problems at work and his famous temper managed to lose him his job of 30 years at Newton Abbot Motors.

The daft thing was that the only time he told me was proud was when he was in a Torbay Hospital bed with an oxygen mask on and being pumped with morphine. I told him that it was ok but deep down inside I was absolutely livid. For 8 years he'd been giving me a bad time because he had my best interests at heart!

There were many times during the last 18 months of his life where I could've quite happily strangled the bloke because of the way he treated me and my mum. I guess as with most cancer patients when they do get frustrated about their own situation you end up taking it out on the very people that care about you the most.

When he did eventually go it was a mixture of sadness and relief for all of us I think. It was quite funny about 2 days before he did depart this world. His sister came to visit and he absolutely hated her. He was circling the airport on morphine and completely zonked out until she started to move his water bottle when he had a Frankenstein moment, the eyes shot wide open and his hands shot up from underneath the bed sheets to wrestle it back off her with a ferocity that turned his knuckles white. I had to leave the room and double up with laughter outside. The nurse thought I was cracking up. I was, but I still had a few marbles left back then.

I think that's one of the keys in dealing, coping and beating the big C. Keeping a sense of humour in some of the darkest situations helps everyone because it reminds you of why you married someone or why they are a dear friend or in my case (whether I like it or not) having my father develop my sense of humour over the years. It's taken me a good 9 years to come to terms with my fathers death. I felt very guilty in the first few years because I couldn't feel that sad about him dying. My sister was very close to him and my mum felt very lonely without him. All I felt was a huge relief at the time that I could go through life without someone constantly on your back. But as I've got older and wiser I think that I've leaned to appreciate him more and more. I sometimes regret not having the foresight to change things during the 8 years when we didn't get on very well. I can see now that he was quite a character really. His mates were the same as well. They said he still weighed a fair bit when carried his coffin into the Crematorium!They also told me the real reason why he pranged his Ford Capri in the mid 1980's. Another drunken Friday night at WBB where the designated "driver" drunk as much as the rest but had to risk his licence one week in four!

My heart goes out to everyone who's suffered from cancer or have seen someone close to them die of it. It sounds like from what Chris Hargreaves has written on his blog that the Todd family contains more than a couple of strong characters who will keep Chris motivated enough to come through this with flying colours.

I think Dave is bang on about the secret being to live as normal a life as possible. Dave, I hope this continues for you for as long as possible.

Thanks for your honest and moving post Chris, I will reply later in more detail later. but I would just say now, that no matter how bad things have been for Carol. no matter how much pain she has been in( the chemo she had this time did what they said it would and really attacked all her nerves and the pain was everywhere and no relief could be found) she has never once took it out on anyone, but still smiled and that has helped to make it easier., but harder as well when you think that such a beautiful person, should even have to deal with what she has too.

I'm at that stage now! GCSE's next year and that - looking forward to getting them out of the way to be honest!

Dave, Buster and Merse.

Thanks so much for taking the time to write something in reply to my post. It was only really my intention when posting just to share my experiences of what I was feeling at the time of Dad's death from an illness which you truly wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.

For me its all about coming to terms with it years after he died. As I said I was so angry with him at the time I completely blocked it out until about 5 years ago. I'm 100% sure now that even during the worst periods of our relationship that he had my best interests at heart but at the time it was a real self confidence zapper to have someone constantly criticising everything you do when I personally thought I was doing a pretty good job of organising my life and facing up to the challenges of adulthood. I didn't need the constant nagging. All I needed to know was that he'd support me in whatever decision I took or which career path I wanted to go down. I worked hard to support myself at University so I was as little a financial burden to him as possible. At the time all I could got from him was negativity but it was seemingly fine for younger sister to lie, cheat and steal her way through life.

But that was then. It was only until I started hitting my late twenties when I learned to calm down a bit and not let that period affect me so much. As buster points out I don't have the experience of being a father. I'm sure that if and when I find a decent woman who's mad enough to have kids with me then I'm sure that I'll manage to screw things up as badly. My mistake was that I took it all rather personally for years and years when I just should've carried on the doing what I was doing. I still have problems with taking criticism but at least I'm not so aggressive in my own defence anymore!