Tattoos, Brain Tumors, Manhattan

My father and my girlfriend

Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

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Well, we discovered my father has both a lung tumor which has grown by 10%, and a new (tiny) brain tumor, which means it has spread. My mom told me this as she and I walked their dogs yesterday. She said it casually, as if she were digressing on some boring, everyday subject.

This makes sense on both ends since the past couple months he’s been coughing more and more, and has been tired and napping on and off most days. Sometimes he struggles to sleep; he wakes in the night and is up for hours. Lately he’s been taking Trazodone which helps. I remember “the old days” last year when he was biliously sick and I ran around like a madman filling prescriptions, getting groceries, walking the dogs, injecting liquid food into his stomach “peg tube,” helping him dress and undress, taking him to last-second ER trips, etc. This, now, is much more mellow. Thankfully.