The C Word

Tuesday was a pretty crappy day.

Generally my parents take my kids the first week of the school holidays and I take off the second week to spend with them.  These holidays my parents were going to have the kids as normal, but I was only allowed to have the Tuesday off, not the Wednesday.  

My work has turned into a pretty hostile environment.  I used to take my laptop home from work and I would do the wages from home when I was off and it saved going in and it meant people still got paid.  Not now, I am not allowed to take my computer home, so it meant if I did not go in, people (including me) would not be paid.

Tuesday morning was great. Harry was at Daycare and Ella and I looked forward to spending the day together.  We went to a movie in the morning and we came home around lunchtime.  I then received an email from work. It was a remittance saying I had been paid back some money for something that I put on my credit card - I then logged onto the company bank account to see if a payment had come through. Usually there are three bank accounts that I see, but on Tuesday there was nothing.  I was able to log on, but nothing came up.  The company has another bank account with a different bank, I logged on and again it was the same.  Here we go again. This is the passive aggressive people that I work for.  Every time I go on holidays they have to try and ruin it. I used to get emails to my phone, but I turned them off last month when my fuel card was taken away. Before, when I used to receive emails, I would always get horrible emails that would ruin my days off. So now they cant get to me that way, so I guess this is their new way to upset me.

That had upset me, and then my mum phoned.   All I remember was she said 'aggressive cancer'

Remember I said my parents were supposed to have the kids in the first week of the holidays.  Mum rung up last Sunday morning. We had just packed the kids clothes ready to leave to take them down to my parents. My mum said she had hurt her back and could not take the kids.  She also mentioned that dad was spending the following day in hospital having a biopsy. Nothing had been said before, and it was only when I probed mum further that she told me that Dad had had a routine prostate blood test last year and it came back elevated.  He was told not to be concerned and then when he went back this year it was more elevated.  They had to wait a month to get into the specialist and another month for the biopsy.  Even though mum rung a couple of hours after the initial phone call to say her back was feeling better and she could have the kids - I told her that she needed to be with dad when he went through the biopsy and not to worry about the kids.   We were also told that the Urologist thought that dad only had a 30% chance that it would come back as cancer.

Mum said it would take about a week to get the results back.  To be honest I had totally forgotten about it, so on Tuesday when mum rung and said it was 'agressive cancer' my world stopped and I burst into tears. Already feeling low from the garbage at work, I sobbed and sobbed and my mum did too.  How did this happen, it couldnt happen - not to my dad.

I felt like I was sinking, drowning, in grief.  Grief for my dad, grief for me. I may be 36 years old, but no way do I feel ready to lose my parents. Grief for my mum. What if the worst happens and we lose my dad, how would she cope. How would she survive. Where would she live. I know that financially that she would be OK, but emotionally. She has never paid bills, never had to worry about money, dad has done all that.

I can understand how people slip into depression. I felt a terrible weight. With the troubles at work and now with the news of my dad, I felt hopeless, total despair.  I wanted to go to bed and just cry, stay there and not come out. The day after was Harry's birthday. I felt so low, but didnt want to ruin the day for him.  Sick, sick, sick. Sick with the feeling of what was going on at work, sick when i looked on the internet and there was no jobs. Sick when I thought of my poor dad and how he must of been feeling.

Then I thought of the degree that I am deciding whether to pursue or not. Can I deal with heartbreak like this. Can I help people when they are going through possibly the worst time in their life? Am I cut out for this?????

On Monday my dad goes back to hospital for the day to run tests. He needs a bone scan to see if the cancer has spread and he needs an MRI and blood tests. I want to be there for him and mum and support them through this day. Dad is quite a private person, so I dont know if he will want me to be there.   Thankfully if I go, it will give me one more day away from work, one more day that I can avoid that place and one more day to type my resignation letter.