My Father Dreams in Creole: Part ONE

This is something different and very personal. I usually speak about my mental health journey on this site and in a way, this is still a part of that. I guess this is my way of coping with the events of the past year. I tend to isolate myself but, by sharing this, I’m hoping to change how I deal with stuff like this in the future. So here is part one of the series.

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In the sterile silence of a hospital room overlooking the New York Bay, I sat and watched my father sleep. He developed a nagging cough that kept him up most nights, I didn’t want to bother him with my visit. The oxygen machine whirred its rhythmic ebb and flow. Faint beeps echoed up and down the halls of the cardio ward at the Brooklyn VA. I watched him from the farthest corner of the room and waited for him to wake up. He began to shift a bit. Probably just a dream, I thought. Then I heard him speak. I never watched my father sleep before, when would I have? I especially never heard him talk in his sleep either. But today - when his exhaustion reached its peak after 5 months of radiation and chemotherapy, and the constant buzz of anxious thoughts that haunt a patient during a long hospital stay - on this day my father mumbled creole in his sleep.

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Early in the pandemic, my father complained about some clogging in his ear that wouldn't go away, kind of like he spent a whole day in a pool. He went to an ear doctor which helped but after some time his ear clogged again. A few times he even mentioned some nasal problems and I'd rush in with my little tricks: nasal sprays, menthol inhaler, 3 different humidifiers, homemade peppermint salve. All those things were temporary fixes, so he ended up back at the ear doctor. After a few more visits he came home one day and mentioned a biopsy. One annoying thing about me is I love research and it's because of situations like this. The world can be chaotic and unpredictable, so I research things to mitigate negative thoughts and “possible biopsy outcomes” is the exact thing I’d obsess over until I had a full picture. What is it? What can I expect from it? How can I make things better?

Nothing can surprise you if you’ve already agonized over every worst-case scenario.

In my research I found 2 possible biopsy outcomes, one was nonthreatening, I can't remember what it was but the other one was terrifying. Two possible outcomes seemed okay, that’s 50/50. I had to think like that because the alternative was to make the terrifying option the thing that I nurture into a fully grown panic attack. But if it was 50/50 I could move on or go about my day. Sure, this was a false comfort and I researched myself into a dark tunnel anyway.

November 2020, right after Thanksgiving, we got the call that my father was officially diagnosed with Nasopharyngeal Cancer. We were on speakerphone and my dad kept looking in my direction to gauge my reaction but all I could do was put all my energy into ignoring the hard knot settling in my throat. I cried quietly to myself as if the oncology doctor on the other line, who's probably on his like 5th bad news call of the day, needed to be spared my emotions. My dad and I sat there for a moment, both of us thinking “oh, okay” and nodding. We were a little perplexed. We weren’t confused because we understood what was happening, but we were flummoxed. I need Willy Wonka words to describe this gobstopper of bad news, it never lost its flavor. Then, in true type A personality fashion, we went into work mode. "What's next? What do we do now?" My therapist uses the phrase "radical acceptance" which I love and am offended by. But hey, that's how we do it in our household. This is the thing, the thing needs to be dealt with, we will deal with the thing. I asked my questions, and we got all the preliminary info about exams, scans, and then appointments to talk about the scans and exams. I was still crying but I stopped wiping the tears away.

The call ended and my dad went into a well warranted panic while I excused myself and went into a blubbering, suffocating sob to my boyfriend. I think he understood me through the gasping and then he laid a heavy "at a boy" pat on my head because he doesn't really do well in those situations having developed a sort of “bad news” callous for his own reasons. It really is helpful to have someone be that composed when all you can do is melt into a depression puddle.

Once I was less melty, I seemed to think it was the right time to go into another spiral of catastrophizing and researched any words I could remember from the phone call. I read studies on survival rate by stage (even though we didn't know what stage yet), testimonials from survivors on reddit, treatment options and side effects, anything to make it make sense. I had to understand it not just for me but for my father. It’s so easy to hear cancer and immediately think DEATH, DYING, DEAD. But if I could wring every ounce of optimism out of the internet it would be easier to pretend we’re immortal. When I finally was able to console my father in whatever way possible, he had already done his own catastrophizing and emerged a man at peace. He’s much better at radical acceptance than I am so he hit me with his "it is what is" talk. Then we went back and forth with a bit of “we’ll do what we have to do” and “we can handle this; we can handle anything.” The natural progression here, especially when speaking with a retired parent, always gets dark.

"I lived a good life

and if I die,

I’ll be happy because

everybody is good.”

Cancer of course doesn’t equal death, so I grabbed my tiny arsenal of facts and figures to steer the conversation away from mourning a life that wasn’t lost yet. The silence between affirmations was filled with love and understanding. A gentle pat here and there and some reassuring smiles. It was an emotional see-saw, each sentence raising the other person back up and on it went. Eventually, we ended our conversation and I went back to my room, to weep again in my boyfriend’s arms.

Thank you for reading part one of this series. Part two will be posted next week. Stay tuned.

-BYJM