Ben's Father's Assessment

Cancer in my family

Stoic about pain

We avoided medication

My father's pain

A crusty old character

Cancer changed him

The cancer returned

Ben's Father's Assessment

Ben's father was 79 when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He had a colostomy and barely survived the surgery. The following year, the cancer returned and it had spread.

It was kind of a unique experience to go from this person that was very... crusty is the only word that comes to mind right off, and the person that, yeah, that I had some difficulty really relating to in a lot of areas of my life to someone that I shared, at least physically I shared, a lot in terms of massages and things like that and the sisters and such. But the thing that I found really unique and amazing is that during this whole experience there were just lots of little facts that surfaced that made it so much easier to care for him. There were things, finding out for example, stories that my mother had never shared with us. And to understand why he showed his love the way he did helped heal a lot. It was a lot of closure that was going on during this time. And if we hadn't been there we would have missed that closure.


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