I consider Father’s Day to be the most important day to me, bigger than all of the others. To me, there is no more important responsibility or title that I can have in my life, than being a “Dad.” And I have been blessed twice. It is not something that I take for granted. A father/child relationship is best described as an hourglass, with sand running through much too quickly, until the sand has all run out. The path to fatherhood begins differently for everyone but there is not greater feeling than when a child is placed in your arms for the first time.
And while the first half of my daughters lives were pretty much “Norman Rockwell paintings” doing normal things that families do from school activities to extracurricular, my divorce put a stronger emphasis on Father’s Day for me, making sure that this one day, above all other days including Christmas and birthdays, was my day to celebrate with my daughters.
There has been no greater honor than to be one of my daughters two main role models. As adults now, there are no more crayons, reading books, or watching Barbie videos. Now the real pressure of fatherhood is on, to make sure they know about insurances, major expenses, career decisions, time management, and of course relationships. I always thought that I would be the one to have the trouble with this progression, and to a degree I do, but it was my younger daughter who had a “Cat’s In The Cradle” moment, when she expressed her fears that, now in college, and in her future, she would not see me as often, which is likely. But just as I got by during my divorce, not being with them every day, technology via Facetime and Skype, I could see them and talk to them any time I wanted or needed to.
Those who know me, know that my daughters are my world. With all of the health issues that I deal with in my survivorship, my daughters are my driving force, to keep fighting. They both have friends who have lost their fathers for one reason or another, and I do not want them to ever have to feel that pain. And while I know that I am mortal and have no control over fate, my love and strength for my daughters is what gets me through every day.
But as much as I celebrate today, I and many others also recognize loss, fathers not able to see their children, or worse, children not able or even willing to see their fathers. As an adult child of divorce, I have experienced this pain. And it is my hope that some day, just as in my case, amends can be made and bring the fathers and their children back together.
I miss my father. It has been ten years now that he has been gone. He got to watch his granddaughters grow in their early years, but how do I wish he could see who they have become. I wish I could tell him, that I had his strength when it came to always fight for my rights as the father of my daughters. I never gave up.
To those who are able to celebrate this day, Happy Father’s Day. And for those who have just memories, may those memories provide you comfort on this day.
This post has been sitting in my head for quite some time now. It became impossible to sit on any longer, though I needed to hold out one more day. Yesterday was my oldest daughter’s 21st birthday, and I wanted yesterday to be her day. Because yesterday was all about her milestone, not mine.
Yes, with my oldest daughter turning twenty-one years old, that is another milestone of mine, as a cancer survivor, that I have reached, that I really never thought I would see the day. But as happy as I was for my daughter, there have been so many thoughts running through my head, that I cannot control, just how lucky I truly am, to have reached another milestone, of many already reached.
The meme pictured above came across my feed today, and the timing and the wording could not be more perfectly said. Over the years, I have made reference to “survivor guilt,” which many mistake me for feeling guilty that I survived cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the guilt of why others have not been as fortunate as me. Please understand, and I am going to shout it, “I AM SO GRATEFUL THAT I AM STILL HERE AND THERE IS SO MUCH MORE THAT I WANT TO DO AND EXPERIENCE!” But my guilt and sorrow is for those who never got out of remission, developed other complications or other cancers and passed away, and other survivors whose bodies simply could take no more.
As the second part of the meme states, “Holy Shit!” every day is a reminder what could be gone tomorrow. And as my daughter celebrated her 21st birthday, actually her second birthday outside of the US, she was celebrating with friends and I could not be more happy for her. I celebrated her birthday going through old photos of her, her younger sister, and myself.
You see, neither of my daughters were around when I battled my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It would be more than a decade before I would even get my chance at parenthood. But being in long term remission, I really did not consider parenthood a milestone. I was done with cancer. I was “over it” as many people wanted me to move on with my life after cancer.
But four years after my oldest daughter was adopted, and two years after my younger daughter was adopted, my world of cancer survivorship, eighteen years after that I thought I was done with cancer because the doctors even told me so, my cancer past came crashing to the present. I was dying. I was not aware of that, but following the emergency double bypass I had to have for “widow maker” damage to my heart, with a blockage of 90% of the LAD (left anterior descending artery), my cardiologist put it bluntly after the surgery, “it was not a question if, but when” I was going to die.
There it was, the first event that nearly took my life from my daughters. I will recognize that day next month, sixteen years ago. So my heart got fixed, that should be the end of the story, right? Unfortunately not. You see, what my oncologist (cancer doctor) was unaware of back in 1995 (my five year milestone Hodgkin’s-free), that the radiation therapy and chemotherapies that I underwent, had the potential to cause progressive and lethal situations. It turns out the scientists knew about it. They just never passed it on to the doctors.
But nearly four years later, I was carried out of my house on an ambulance stretcher at 3am, again, dying. I had developed sepsis, a fatal infection. I was unaware of what was happening, felt fine even as I went to bed that night. I had developed something called “aspiration pneumonia”, which without getting too technical, was caused by me unknowingly inhaling gastrointestinal “stuff” into my lungs while I was asleep (another complication due to radiation). Sepsis had developed, and without the correct and fast treatment, I would have died. Again, this is where the story should have ended, but it did not.
I had another round of aspiration pneumonia nine months later. All the while, remember me mentioning about the “progressive” side effects from my treatments? They were still doing their things. But here is the kicker. Because of the risks of doing anything to correct any other issue being more risky than doing nothing, the situations needed to be as dire as the other events I had gone through. I had to hear the words “severe” for any issue to get corrected. I often refer to my body as a human ticking time bomb. The good thing is, I have been watched by many doctors, participating in a “survivorship clinic” setting. This is where doctors exist that “get it” when it comes to following up the needs of cancer survivors that too many other doctors still do not get. So all these different doctors that “watch” me decide when it is time to do something, in other words, yep, death or some other serious issue is impending.
Case in point, 2019, I needed to have the RCA (right coronary artery) stented, because back when my bypass was done, that cardiologist felt the RCA would get better on its own. It did not. Then in 2020, my left carotid artery had finally reached “severe” status, scorched by radiation damage as well, and the risk of a stroke was now a reality if not corrected. Next, in 2021, my aortic valve had reached a “severe” status from the calcifications from radiation damage needing to be replaced.
Is there more? You betcha! But you get the idea now how the second part of that meme plays out. And the truth of the matter is, any of the events that I mentioned, or any of the many that I did not mention, any of those could have led to me missing what I consider some of the most important milestones of my life, in my daughters lives. And for sixteen years, that is what both of my daughters have known. It has become a “given” by my daughters, that any health challenge I face, I will get through it, because that is all that they know.
But I know something that they do not. Time is not my friend. You see, all of the things that I have had corrected, because the progressive issues from my treatments are still at work, will need to be redone again some day, and possibly some other new issues develop, because they have had time to do so. The question is, will my body handle second attempts or the new things that develop. For some of my survivors who faced similar situations, their bodies could take no more. And for some, they were not even aware of anything when their survivorship came to an end. With my daughters still so young, they have not been introduced to that stage of my survivorship yet. But that time is soon coming.
Look, I know this post is probably one of the heaviest posts anyone has read from me in a long time. As my daughter was celebrating twenty-one years, I could not help but, because my brain betrayed me that way, reflect on the many things that almost kept me from seeing their school graduations, birthday milestones, and so much more.
I will leave you with this. I really am a positive minded person. It is a disservice to me as a friend to tell me to “just get over it,” or “just be positive” because my body and my cancer survivorship dictates otherwise. But I do go to bed each night, expecting to wake up the next morning, and do the things I have planned tomorrow. And there are many more tomorrows that I want, college graduations, weddings, grandchildren, so that means I will continue to let the doctors do what they need to help me reach those further milestones. But ultimately, I have no say in tomorrows. I have learned that from other fallen survivors.
Yes, I am grateful for surviving Hodgkin’s Lymphoma thirty-five years. I am grateful having survived all of the medical side effects that I have faced. But I also realize, that at any moment, as I am constantly reminded, I could also miss the next milestone. This is what cancer survivorship is to me. I am making the most of my years as I can.
If you have ever sat at a Blackjack table in a casino, having an “ace” and a “face card” or your cards totaling twenty-one is considered a victory. Many times you can beat the dealer with less than twenty-one, such as with eighteen, or even on rare occasions, sixteen. In life, these numbers; sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-one carry their own sort of victories. I now have a daughter who has hit “blackjack” in life, turning twenty-one years of age. Though we recognize adults at the age of eighteen being given rights such as the right to vote and use credit cards, there is still a tendency to look at our young adults, still as kids. But once turning twenty-one, it is official. While I often find myself referring to young adults in the early twenties as “kids,” they are adults. And now, I am officially the Dad of a twenty-one year-old adult.
Officially, my daughter no longer has any restrictions because of her age. She is able to legally do anything she chooses whether going to a casino, dancing at a club, or buying alcohol. With her youthful appearance, it is going to be decades of being “carded,” required to show identification to prove legal age status.
My daughter, in her twenty-one years of life has faced so many challenges already, all the while forming who she is to become. Being adopted, the biggest event in her life, she had no say in, uprooted from one world, placed into another. Being her adoptive parents, we are the only parents she has ever known. And 75% of her life she has been witness to one health crisis after another involving me. Finally, dealing with her parents divorce was challenging I am sure.
All the while, I wanted school to be a priority for her, along with making character and reputation pillars in her life. She grew with an empathy and determination mirroring how I was raised. Admittedly, she was a better student than I was and as she nears the end of her second year of college, she now has her pathway into what she will do as an adult in her sights.
There was no party today for her, at least with her family, as she is overseas. Ironically, this is the second birthday that she is out of the country, the first time, as she was adopted, though I did get to at least celebrate her first birthday with her, this time, she was on her own. But she was surrounded by her friends today for a fun night out for dinner. As grown-ups, we often put so much into birthday parties for our kids, making them super-events, competing with other parents, to make sure we live up to standards. When in reality, I do not think I ever saw my daughter having as great a time on her birthday, than the photos sent to me today.
Birthdays will now just become an annual cycle. I do hope that she does not develop that avoidance thing that comes turning into the next decade. There is no more mystery or challenge with getting away with anything, because she is now of legal age for everything.
But as I found myself, as I often do, going through old photos over the last few weeks, looking at my twenty-one year-old daughter, she is still the same daughter placed in my arms, that I watched grow, year after year after year. What a thrill it has been.
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