Another Sleepless Night

Pancreatic cancer is one of the cancers that are called “silent killers”; meaning that by the time the cancer is discovered, there is little hope. Once it presents, even with treatment it is a fatal, terminal form of cancer. According to Wikipedia, as well as the Mayo Clinic, pancreatic cancer kills about 34,000 people a year. This year or maybe next, it will kill my father. He will not be there to walk me down the isle when I get married and give me away. He will not be there when my children are born, or when they are growing up. They will never get to hear him laugh, and I will never get to hear him laugh again. Our home phone number will show up on my caller id and I will know that it won’t ever be my dad to say hello or to tell me some crazy joke he heard, or ever just to tell me that he loves me. Someday, my whole life will change. Now I’m trying to find comfort in my family and friends and others who have gone though the same loss, like Ash. Some time soon think I want to go get a tattoo on my leg or over my heart that says cancer sucks with a purple ribbon. Anyone in?

My face is a combination of my mother and my father’s. I wonder if it will bother my mother to see it, or my sister. I definitely have his sense of humor; Jana always says I’m good for a laugh, sometimes I even make mom laugh! (And that’s hard to do.) I wish there were some kind of horrible mistake. Or maybe that chemo will fix it, take the disease away instead of the disease taking my dad away. I’m supposed to be a grown up. But I never have been. Another sleepless night of worrying and wondering isn’t doing me any good. Tonight, I wonder if Daryl will walk me down the isle. No one else will be left. This disease took my godfather too. So now who do I turn to in a spiritual and emotional crisis when I feel like I shouldn’t be a burden on the rest of the people that I love? Maybe I’ll set up an appointment with a counselor.