On Friday, my father got results of his biopsy he had earlier in the week. He is just shy of 94 years old. He's had a long healthy life, but a couple of years ago was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He's had a couple of runs of treatments that have held it at bay. But it has now spread to his lung. It was an aggressive cancer at the time of the original diagnosis. So it is not a surprise that it has finally begun to spread. But it is a disappointment. I know people don't live forever, and that as we are living, we are moving toward death. But I can't get through a day thinking like that! Who can? We talk about life! Make the most of life! Live your life! Seize the day! We all know our time on earth is limited. Yet it is still a surprise to me, each and every time, when someone I know is terminally ill, or dies. Even my dad at his age. I think if I had an estimated point in time that I may stop living due to disease or some injury, I probably would look at each day as dying, rather then living. I don't think I am a person who will handle that well.
My mother handled it well. Or at least in my presence, she did. She also never really asked how long she would live with her cancer. I remember asking what the doctor said - how long do they think? She always told me she didn't ask. Maybe it gave her more control. It allowed her to keep living, because there wasn't an "end date" looming. Or maybe she did ask but didn't share. I sometimes wonder what her thoughts were as she knew her "forever" was coming to an end. I think I was afraid to ask. She was almost 74, still young.
I've been spoiled - in my very large family of eleven brothers and sisters, eleven brothers and sisters-in-law, many nieces and nephews and great nieces and nephews, we've been very fortunate to be for the most part a healthy bunch for so many years. But we're getting older - my mother died fifteen years ago, I lost one of my sisters four years ago at the age of 57, and a brother-in-law in his early 50's about nine years ago. I guess that's life, right? Death is a part of life.
FTD, whatever it does in its destruction of the brain, takes away the comprehension of what is to come for my husband. I think that is good for him, not so good for me. I don't think I'll get to know his thoughts and feelings when things progress, whether that's five years from now, or ten or twenty. I feel like it would be a one way conversation. We have had several frank conversations about the disease. And I've told him that this disease is different for every person. He seems to "get" that he has FTD, but it is easily put out of his thoughts and his mind. And yet, I've heard him in conversations with people when he is doing what I call his "bit" where he talks in Spanish and asks how people are doing, when the person says "Muy bien", he always says he's never muy bien (very good), he's just bien (good) or asi asi (so so). I don't know if he's just trying to be funny, or if he is not feeling great.
As I have more conversations with him, interacting with him more, trying to pull him more into my reality, trying to engage him and get some exercise going in that brain of his, I do notice more deficits in comprehension and life skills. It is just more evident to me now.
As I read more about FTD and try to educate myself about the stages and progression of this disease, I am reminded that we are fortunate that Dave's progression has been slow thus far. But I wonder what starts the next stage? What causes the tipping? Is it one particular brain cell among all the other brain cells that bursts or dies or whatever and another light goes out? Or is it the opposite? Is it not using a part of the brain - not accessing its power - not exercising it that makes it fail further? I'm not good about not knowing. I need the big picture! I'm a big picture person! But I don't have control of this. And no one really knows. So we just keep on living, a day at a time, and we make the most of it all! Because forever could be just a second.
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