Paul's Heart

What Easter Used To Mean

First to all those celebrating the Easter holiday, Happy Easter. There was a time for me years ago, when the Easter holiday was about the religious story behind the holiday, and its significance, and when I was a child, it was all about the loot left by a mythical bunny rabbit.

Splitting my time behind the families of my ex-spouse’s families and my families was a difficult thing to do, because they always wanted us to spend all day, or at least most of the day with their families. Mine in general did not get much consideration. But one holiday that I fought for year after year, was Easter. It was the one holiday that I gave my father. There was no negotiating, it was his holiday. I put no time limit on the amount of time we spent there until we went off to my ex’s families. It was a day that my dad looked forward to, hosting a major meal, prepared by his kids, and we packed his small home. The highlight was watching my brother and I doing dishes. When I adopted my daughters, we held a miniature Easter egg hunt for my daughters. My dad asked for no other holiday or time of the year. This was the only thing he ever asked of me.

Tomorrow is Easter. But Easter will not be spent like other years. He is in the latter stages of lung cancer. There will be no big feast. In fact, he will not even get to see his granddaughters tomorrow. This is partially due to an arrangement I made with their mother, but there was a change with being able to see my dad that was not planned.

No, it will not be the usual Easter holiday for me. I will go to visit him later in the afternoon. In my heart, I am looking forward to Easter next year, when there is not so much heaviness in my heart.

I want you to know, that if you do celebrate this holiday, I hope it is a wonderful celebration for you. And even if you do or do not, I will leave you with this, so that my post is not a complete downer. Keep an eye on the internet for the annual Easter cartoon of two chocolate Easter bunnies. One is missing his rear end, the other is missing his ears, as those are popular pieces for kids to chew off first. So the bunny with no butt says, “My butt hurts” and the rabbit with no ears says “What? I can’t hear you.”

Happy Easter.

To Work Or Not Work (During Diagnosis/Treatments)

As if a cancer patient does not have enough on their minds, fighting for their lives, another reality must be faced for many, making a decision to work during the rest of their diagnostic process and treatment phases, and how soon to return to work once treatment is done.

There is no easy answer to this situation. It really depends on the individual and the working conditions that exist. For me, I knew of only one way to get myself through my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and that was to work. It is all I knew, how I was raised. If I was able to stand, I was at work.

From beginning to end, I only missed one month of work, and that was to recover from one of the diagnostic procedures that had been done, the staging laparotomy (be glad you have PET scans today). But through all of my treatments, both radiation and chemotherapy, I missed only the appointment times.

I needed to be at work, rather than sitting at home, with my mind unoccupied. But as firm as I was with that, by the end of my treatments, I had felt completely different. My work environment was extremely stressful, and to be honest, I blame my work environment for triggering my Hodgkin’s. Stress drives down your immune system. I firmly believe that. But as my treatments went on, so did the insensitivity and personal attacks by my co-workers who felt slighted, that perhaps I was being given special favors, “just because I had cancer.”

In my life, this was just the first of more than a handful of times, when I let the way I was raised, determine whether or not I would work. And though I say every time, I would have not worked during that illness, I know full well, I will be right there at the next day. My history speaks for itself.

Hodgkin’s Disease = diagnosis to end of treatments, 30 days of work missed for recovery from surgery for staging laparotomy

Heart Bypass = courtesy of late side effects from my treatments, missed 3 months of work, returned 3 months ahead of schedule to the full work load plus overtime

Septic Pneumonia = 3 days, wanted to return to work, doctor ordered me out another two weeks (not my fault I missed that time). Returned to full work schedule and overtime.

Double Pneumonia = same as above

And there are another handful of incidents, that I literally crawled into work, in extreme pain, only to be dragged out of work, to the emergency room.

Truth be told… I am a fool for subjecting myself to these kinds of efforts. But I feel a responsibility for bringing in a paycheck. But these days, my past stubbornness has brought forth its own side effects, rather aggravated the late developing side effects from my treatments. I can no longer go full tilt anymore, my body over recent years has finally rejected my “work at all costs” performance.

It is bad enough working 50-60 hours a week, and years ago operating a very successful disc jockey service. But with various looming cardiac and pulmonary issues, muscular and spinal degeneration issues, all courtesy of my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and treatment side effects, I can only work at about 75% of what once used to be 125%.

There are other risk factors to have been considered with working during treatments. And this is a big one. Many treatments drive down an immune system, which of course leaves a patient susceptible to the co-workers who show up to work sneezing and coughing their germs all over.

So, I say, as always, had I to do it all over again, I would not have worked during my Hodgkin’s, or rushed to get back from my other issues. But then again, I am sure I would be right back at work.