time

ten years ago, when my father’s RA was at its worst and he thought it’d be “fun” to have a couple of heart attacks in the span of about 8 months, i started preparing myself for the fact that he might not make it to 60.

eight months ago, due to a form-related fluke, they ran a blood test on my dad to check his pancreas that they should not have, which had some rather scary results. one sonogram later his pancreas was pronounced “perfectly fine.” mystery test results remained somewhat of a mystery, but since he felt fine, everyone sort of relaxed about it.

two weeks ago, enjoying our 12th annual “pre-crazy-family-christmas” lobster dinner, as we all sat around marveling at how old we all were, i commented that ten years ago, i didn’t think he’d make it to 60.

“well, there’s still time,” he said with a smile. “i don’t turn 61 for another 5 months.”

tomorrow, he gets his second CT scan in eight days, this time with a biopsy on the rather sizeable tumor on his pancreas to determine what kind of pancreatic cancer it is, which will give us an indicator if he’s got less than 2 years, or less than 6 months left. thanks to the holidays, we’ll probably know more sometime next week.

i’m hopping around between anger and depression, and something that feels like acceptance, but i’m pretty sure is just denial and depression mixed together.