My new normal

In mid-December last year, Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  

I remember sitting there listening to dads specialist thinking, “Are you fucking kidding me!  This man has Alzheimer’s, survived and is in remission from bladder cancer, has just lost his wife & now you’re telling me he has prostate cancer!!!”

It just didn’t seem real, I listened to the doctor go on but didn’t really take it all in. 

We are all guilty of those moments of feeling sorry for ourselves and at that moment I most certainly did. To me it was cruel. I had one parent who’d had a lung disease for years and suffered terribly for it. Now my poor dad was going through something that felt eerily similar. Why my parents? Why me?

I had to pull myself together, as I sat there with dad, who was just nodding his head as the doctor spoke. 

We left the hospital & started our slow walk back to the car. I asked dad how he was and he said what he always says, “fine love.” I asked if he was ok with everything the doctor just told him. He replied by asking “what doctor?” So I explained that we’d just been to see his specialist at the hospital.  

I don’t remember that dad said, but I knew it wasn’t his fault for forgetting, it was the Alzheimer’s. I thought to myself that dad having no recollection of the appointment in that small space of time was ok. I looked at him and he was happy. And to me, that was and still is the most important thing. 

It’s hard wrap your head around Alzheimer’s.  At times you just don’t understand why they can’t remember anything in such a short space of time but yet they can remember something from years ago. It can be bloody frustrating. It’s taken me a very long time to get to this point, the point where it’s ok, where I understand, it hasn’t been easy though. There’s been a lot of tears, a lot of angry words but I’ve accepted this is how it. This is my new normal with dad and that’s ok.