Cancer is a huge fucking problem. It affects so many people. The treatments are just as bad as the symptoms and the entire process is a trial of maybe this will kill the cancer before it kills you. Watching my father go through this was absolutely terrifying and scarring, but no one talks about trauma related to seeing your loved one in more pain than you thought possible. I had thought I had known fear before cancer. Both of my parents had serious chronic illnesses and I watched as they struggled, I tried to help, I tried to do what I could to make them feel better. They were both frequently hospitalized or needed to remain in bed for extended time. We never talked about how scary it was. Hovering at a parent’s bedside just wanting them to be healthy. Cancer took all of that fear and boosted it up to 1,000.

June or July in 2013 my dad started having weird symptoms. Full body itching, terrible itching that nothing helped and there was no rash or way to explain what felt like poison oak made babies with wool. He had trouble eating, his digestive system went completely out of whack. Doctors couldn’t figure it out. His primary care sent him to get specialist testing in San Francisco, four hours away from home. August 2013 my dad and mom left for what was supposed to be a day trip. It was a month before I saw my dad again. Three weeks before I saw my mom.

That’s cancer. Before you know and after you know. Everything changes while you try to make it look like nothing has changed. In the media it is always “battle with cancer” or “lost to cancer” “won against cancer”. It’s not a fucking sport. It feels like war, sure, but I resent the implication that its something as tangible as an army. Or scared off if you have enough will power. I hate how much it is used as the big plot twist in movies or casually mentioned everywhere. I don’t think it is fair to turn on the tv and be instantly reminded of the disease. Seeing what my parents went through as patient and primary care taker will haunt me for the rest of my life. We watched as my dad slowly slipped away. I was spared from a lot of it because I lived far away. My dad wanted me to keep chasing my dreams, he didn’t want me to be stuck. The last time we had a conversation he told me to keep going after my career, that the next time I saw him we could go get apple cider instead of going to radiation treatments. He always got better. No matter what life threw at him he always got better. Until he didn’t. I regret leaving him for those final two weeks. I was just too scared and wishing against all that he would get better.

Stage 4B Pancreatic Cancer. Death sentence. Five years or less, usually less. I was selfish enough to think that my dad would be the one to defy all odds and make it out. He hoped so too. In the same breath he would talk about how his doctor’s didn’t think it was looking good but he and my mom were going to grow old together. We were in denial. I’m still in denial.