Yesterday afternoon my 75 year old father, Dad to me, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I am a 48 year old married father of 4, with both parents still alive (and one grandparent), married to a girl whose parents are also still with us, so with all this life around us, this news has come as an awful shock. I feel that I want to chronicle this experience, warts and all. If nothing else, I think that it will help me. Who knows, in time perhaps it will help others. I hope so.
Background first.
Dad is 75. I would describe him as old school, right-wing, honest, frequently extremely funny and very dogmatic, occasionally bordering on bigoted. I would also describe him as a family man, devoted to his second wife (my step mother, Carolyn, or Mole as she is known by some), his five children (me, my brother James, half brothers George and Hugh and half sister Alice, hereafter referred to as “the halves”), racing, cigarette cards, Silk Cut and Deal or No Deal. I can’t promise that he would put them in the same order! He cannot abide political correctness, vegetables (except potatoes, roasted or chipped!), racing being referred to as horseracing, words such as “basically” or phrases such as “at the end of the day”. Are you getting the picture? In summary, he is an archetypal example and ideal candidate for the television series “Grumpy Old Men”.
It could be said to be something of a miracle that he has made it to this age, given his love of the daily fry up, Coca Cola (not Pepsi, Diet or any other version!), chocolate (any), McDonalds chicken nuggets and, of course, Silk Cut. And his loathing of vegetables could hardly be more extreme. One of the highlights of Christmas lunch with children and grandchildren (of which he has seven) is his annual attempt to avoid eating the one statutory brussel sprout. To the best of my knowledge our attempts have always been thwarted, by way of being smuggled into pockets, lobbed into flower pots. I think one year it turned up some days later in an ice bucket! Exercise has never featured all that highly on his list either. A brisk daily walk..........to the end of the road for papers/fags/chocolate is about as strenouous as it gets!
Probably also worth mentioning my step mother, Mole: born and raised in Sydney, she came to London in the lead up to the Commonwealth Games of 1970. She has many of the qualities associated with the Aussies (and some would say, some of the faults too!). Most importantly for the months ahead, she is as tough as teak, won’t take flannel from anyone (least of all Dad!), wants straight answers to forthright questions and will stop at nothing to aid his recovery. In short, she is perfectly cast for what will doubtless be a very difficult role.
By way of background, that is probably enough for the time being. Now, to explain the name of this blog. With an Aussie step mother and being a family of cricket lovers, a commonly used expression in our family when a crisis, large or small, amusing or not, arises is "Drama at the Gabba". It is derived from a line of commentary delivered by Richie Benaud, former Australian Test captain and latterly commentor. It was delivered during a Test match held in Brisbane at the Gabba cricket ground, after a particularly lively passage of play and Richie welcomed his audience back, after a commercial break, with the line "Drama at the Gabba".
Back to the big C. The good news, at this point, in the middle of such awful news, is that his cancer is operable, which is, by all accounts, pretty rare for pancreatic cancer, particularly in a man of his age. He has been lucky (that looks and sounds wrong) in that he was unwell about six weeks ago. He had a stent inserted in a tube running from his liver that was not in great shape and subsequent MRI scans suggested a possible lesion on his pancreas. A biopsy has shown the tissue to be malignant. His good fortune is therefore that, in relative terms, the illness has been diagnosed very early and, as a result, the tumour is small, so he has a better chance than the considerable majority of those unfortunate enough to contract this particularly pernicious strain of cancer.
Having worked extremely hard for most of his life and put all five children through private boarding schools at vast expense, as well as having done one divorce (!), pennies are not exactly bountiful and a relatively recent casualty was the private health insurance. The law of Sod says that cancelling insurance inevitably leads to an incident that would have been covered.
So, as things stand, the NHS is lined up to treat him. He is lucky (I use that word again) to be under a team at Hammersmith Hospital in London that has a global reputation for its research into and treatment of pancreatic cancers. To boot, it is only about three miles from home, which will make life considerably easier for Mole.
His reaction to the news, or at least the impression he conveyed, was entirely in keeping with what I would have expected. We all knew that yesterday was D (for decision) day and so I rang him to enquire as to the results. From the start of the call, it was like any of the huge number of telephone conversations that we have had over the years. He always starts a phone conversation with “Good morning/afternoon/evening to you”, in the style of the erstwhile BBC weather man Michael Fish! Yesterday was no exception. He presented the broad facts in a thoroughly matter of fact way, akin to the way in which he might discuss the weather. Mole was more clued up on the facts……timings, size of tumour, convalescence time and so on.
Yesterday was the birthday of my half brother, George. He, as well as my other halves, Hugh and Alice, went for supper with Dad and Mole last night, at which the news was revealed. Given my father’s stoic nature and Mole’s front foot manner, it went, I understand, as well as could be expected.
Whilst this was going on, I was doing what, I imagine, many people in a similar situation do: namely, sitting at my computer typing phrases like “pancreatic cancer survival rate” and “pancreatic cancer operation” into Google and then trawling through the results. It is not an easy thing to do and I imagine that it makes the lives of healthcare specialists frequently extremely awkward, when dealing with patients and their families. But I am glad I did it. As a result I have a very basic understanding of the condition, its treatment and the inevitable statistics. The famous quote, attributed to Mark Twain “There are lies, damn lies and statistics” is as apposite here as it is in the investment management industry, in which I earn my crust. They don’t make pretty reading, but at least, as referred to above, he is lucky that it has been discovered so early and that the tumour is small and therefore operable.
So how do I feel about this? Last night I swung between occasional wobbles and stiff upper lip. I cannot bear the thought of the dreadful road that he must travel and that we must watch. But I know that every member of Team Farquhar must play their part in helping the old boy to beat this ghastly illness. I sent a text to my halves after they got home last night which I concluded with a quote from Homer’s Iliad: “Light is the task where many share the toil”. We are all in this together, we must support each other, cajole each other, care for each other, help each other get though this. We will.
I find myself now at the point of wanting to tell people and yet not feeling ready to tell my four children. My eldest is away at Exeter University, my second daughter and my son at boarding school and my youngest daughter at home. I feel I need to be able to tell them when I am confident that I can get from the first word to the final full stop without emotionally losing it and I do not feel ready for that. I have, however, sent an email to all my work colleagues (40 or so) telling them. My reason for wanting to do so is simple. I did not want the news to spread gradually around the company and, over the course of the next couple of weeks, have a stream of people offering sympathy: it is not the people offering sympathy that I want to avoid, I just want to get it out of the way and move on! Three hours on, I firmly believe it was the right thing to do. And it makes me want to tell all those who need to know as soon as possible. As I say, I want to get all the sympathy bit out of the way and move on.
Two pages into this, I can say with certainty that simply getting my thoughts down on paper helps. Typing the above has, by the simple act of thinking about what to say and how I feel it should be said, been therapeutic and has clarified feelings and made the first steps on the road ahead feel not so daunting.
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