There's a spot

My brother called. I have been waiting up for him. He has been in the meeting with my parents and the oncologist for the last 2 1/2 hours or so. He had to leave early to catch a plane home.

So, it's pretty grim. My father had an MRI yesterday "just to check" that there were no spots on his liver, and they found one. One. Usually there are loads, which makes it officially stage 4, inoperable and we are fucked. With one, they can't tell yet. PET scan tomorrow to confirm, if they even can confirm anything. So it might be Stage 4, or not. And the relevant question is now "It took them this long to figure it out!?"

My brother says that my parents don't believe that the spot is cancerous, even though the doctor says that there is a 90% chance that it is. However, so far, this entire thing has been atypical, and not in a good way. If it's stage 4, they won't operate, because it could "anger" the cancer and make it much more aggresive. Personally, I don't care about making it angry. Frankly, I'm angry.

They will be staying in Houston for the next two weeks, in any case, because they want to start him on chemo early next week. I am wondering what the damn point is, if they don't want to operate on it.

So we may well be flying out of here. At least I will have a better internet connection, as I am poaching internet from the flat 3 floors beneath us at the moment.

Now what? My brother says that they will probably be unwilling to operate for at least 8 months. So, as our doctor friend claims, does that mean that we are supposed to go back to normal, just live our lives? Am I supposed to go back to London, fiddle around in the theatre and hope for the best? Or could I possibly be squandering any time that I have remaining with my father? Is this not the time that people later wish that they had had with their parents? I have many things that are unresolved with my father and frankly, I am not entirely sure that we want to resolve them now. It's too soon. He's supposed to have 10 months to decide whether to come to my wedding, and then several more years to figure out his relationship to any potential children we might have. We have never talked about god, or about the damned money, or about what the fuck I am going to do with my life. And I'm not sure we can do it all now.

So now what? Does everything stop while we hold our breaths and pray in vain? Or do I trust that tomorrow will be another day and pretend that today is normal?

Fuck normal.