This is not Chuck speaking - this is Alice (who calls Chuck “Dad” usually). May this post be stricken from the record if necessary for accuracy reasons. I’m sitting bedside with Chuck, both of us feeling like there needed to be another post. It’s been over two weeks since his stroke, and he’s now being comforted by the stuff junkies dream of, the drugs of Palliative Care. Palliative Care is just medical care with the goal of giving a patient the highest quality of life. Technically, he’s been receiving Palliative Care since his cancer diagnosis, but now he’s been given the golden key to the good stuff. That’s why I’m talking. This started out as a conversation between us, but quickly lost track:
Alice: We got home from the hospital and it took a couple of days to learn what your body’s capabilities were. A couple hilarious spills off the couch to be exact.
Chuck: *Laughs* Something about the snow leopard.
Alice: What do you want to say about the snow leopard?
Chuck: He looks on. Unrelenting.
In all fairness, there is a stuffed snow leopard at the foot of his bed, but it wasn’t the direction I was hoping for, so I’ll do my best to take it from here.
Hospice care isn’t what we expected. Chuck mentioned this too. There’s no big scary nurse giving you sponge baths and dictating your life 24/7. It’s actually a lot of nice nurses who remind me of a piano teacher Abby and I used to have. And they only provide as much support as you need. With Mary, Abby and myself treating home hangout time like a job, and an outpouring of amazing friends and family available constantly, we haven’t needed much support. But Chuck has still been considering calling in for a sponge bath.
Which brings me to my next bit; it would be the understatement of the century to say my father has people who care about him. Friends and family from near and far have come bearing gluten-free vegetarian treats and have overflowed his message boxes on every media platform. We may weary slightly of guests, but he doesn’t. It’s been a pretty constant Chuck party, and I can’t think of a better kind.
There are certain things, like losing his appetite and saying goodbye to friends that we all knew were doing to be difficult. The unforeseen challenge of the last couple weeks has been the itchy skin that we’ve learned isn’t uncommon with liver failure. There’s nothing graceful about it, and there’s just no “good stuff” drug for it that helps for more than a short time. The silver lining is the consistent loving human contact he gets from lotion rubs. I’ve wondered more than once if he’s faking the whole sickness thing just for the foot rubs. I might consider it myself.
The bucket list that Chuck outlined for me the night I got to the hospital was exceptionally manageable. We played skip-bo. We saw Lake Michigan. We drank awesome milkshakes. We brought cookies to the nurses at the Lacks Cancer Center. I guess someone like my dad doesn’t have a lot of last minute amends to make. He’s got no fear, which is good because fear has no place here. Marlee and Isabel graduated high school yesterday, and are starting new chapters in the unknown. I've found myself to be the oldest in the next generation of Petersons, at the age my Dad was when he owned a house and had a one-year old kid. I don’t want to speak for Mary and Abby, or the others who have spent time in our living room recently, but there is comfort in the fact that we are all hurtling towards the unknown together. And if Chuck has no fear, I don’t either.
If there’s one thing that sticks out from Chuck’s depiction of life with cancer, and what he’s reminded me lately by still making hilarious well-timed quips when I thought he was sleeping, is that there’s no use taking anything too seriously. Life is absurd. That you can count on.
