Dolor Comedenti

In July 2018, my step-father was dropped off at my house by my sister to accompany me to a baseball game. As we were preparing to leave my house, I said to him, “You can smoke in my car, since you’re my dad.” His response was,”It’s okay, I’ve been trying to smoke less because of the cancer.” 

This was how I found out that my step-father had lung cancer. At this time, they did not know what stage it was in. My mother and my step-father never did have all of the information that they needed to make the best decisions they could for his health, and they did not know that they did not know. Over the first few months, he began doing chemotherapy. The port became infected at one point and they attempted to treat this but the infection was never gone for long. My step-father became depressed and they prescribed him Wellbutrin. I was married in November 2018, and at this time, he had begun losing weight and another strange symptom had been occurring that no one seemed to be paying much attention to and no one was listening to me regarding the possible severity. My step-father could never read well, he was almost illiterate. Around the time of my wedding, he had begun to read novels.

I watched as my mother put all of her trust in doctors and did not question their treatment or insist on their investigating the possibility of it having spread to his brain. My sister and I spoke with her several times throughout December 2018 and January 2019 regarding this possibility, made stronger by their already finding it to have spread. I do not remember all of the details of this time. We live in Houston, Texas, the doctors working on my step-father’s case should have been some of the best there are and their credentials say they are; however, somehow they forgot to do a full body scan once they discovered the spread. They dismissed his sudden ability to read, unless my mother did not tell them. 

At the end of January 2019 or beginning of February 2019, the inevitable happened, and this part is also blurry in my memory. They found tumors in his brain. They decided to go a nonsurgical route initially. While he was at home, waiting for surgery, he fell and hit his head and did not tell anyone. He then had a seizure and was hospitalized, at which point he never returned home. He now had swelling in his brain that they fought to keep down for weeks. The cancer could not be treated during this time, they could not do surgery to remove the offending tumors, until he was medically stable. While we were waiting for him to become stable, my step-sister got married in his hospital room, just in case. 

He became medically stable, just barely, in March 2019. They completed the surgery and he came out a different man. My step-father was generally a good-natured, calm, patient person, never quick to anger and certainly not violent. After the surgery, he was ripping electrical fixtures out of walls, trying attack people, he was confused sometimes, and he was angry a lot. Sometimes he could not see, it was a phenomenon I have not found a name for: his brain was processing what he was seeing, but he could not actually see it. He would say things like, “I know there is a red truck there, but I can’t see it.” He also could not use the left side of his body. At this point, my step-father had become a frail man. Toward the end of March 2019, they moved him to a care home. The last time that I spoke to him was March 24, 2019. 

On April 15, 2019, I got the call that they were taking my step-father to the hospital. He was incoherent, he was not able to speak at all. When they got him there and after hours of attempted diagnosis, he had VRE and the tumors had grown significantly—in his lungs and brain. He had two significant blood clots and the cancer had spread to his bones, as well. The doctors brought us all in a room to discuss the options with us-my mother, myself, and my three sisters. I asked the hard questions. The bottom line was we had two options: treat him for the infection and possibly keep him alive to die miserably from terminal cancer or make him comfortable, take him off life support, and see what happens. We chose to take him off life support. At 8:30 pm, we took him off life support and waited, watching his hitched breathing, both scared and hopeful each one would be the last, for 3 hours. He died at 11:33 pm on April 15, 2019, approximately 9 months after diagnosis. 

I firmly believe that things could have been different had my mother been better educated and more assertive. I do not blame her for his death, as this was a situation she did not know how to handle and she did the best she knew how to do. Sometimes doctors can overlook details, it is important to advocate for yourself. It is important to tell doctors everything, sometimes information that seems insignificant or unrelated to you, is important. This was my first and only experience with cancer in my life, near or far, and my second experience losing a father.