Education help after Cancer care
My name is Daniel, and i'm am soon to be 34 years old. My story begins at 20 years of age, when in the Autumn of 2001 i found that my father had been diagnosed with Bowel cancer. It is impossible to write the the full description of the past 12 years because a great deal occured in that time due to this very terrible illness.
At the time, i was due to begin a new career as an apprentice at Airbus industries, the company who builds aircraft. A new venture in my young life that i was very excited about. But, due to my fathers illness, and members of my family who did not take responsibility for the sharing of care for him, i was forced to terminate my apprenticeship because my father required around the clock care at home. I immediately stepped forward and did everything i possibly could. I did not focus on my life anymore, for my father was all i cared about. He had a disease that people die from so he essentially became my ultimate priority. As my father recovered from major surgery and underwent chemotherapy, he was bed ridden and i was the only one who cared for him. My mother had to work until the evening and my eldest sister had recently given birth. But my other 3 siblings stayed away the whole time. A common thing that never deviated for 12 years.
For 6 months i cared for my father and nursed him back to health, and eventually had him walking once more. In all a took a full year for him to be as fully recovered as possible. My father was a referee so he was very fit, and getting him walking again was imperative. Eventually i had him able to jog and then sprint and in no time he was back to his old self. But in 2003 his cancer had returned with a vengeance. Once again he underwent major surgery to remove all of his bowel and again, required 24 hour care at home. His chemotherapy treatments left him once more bed ridden, extremely sick and i knew that it was going to be far worse than the first time, so without question i resigned from my job in order to care for him again.
Once again i helped him regain his health and physiotherapy for 2 to 3 months until he was able to walk unaided. Once he was back to health again i decided to try and go back to work. It was at this point that i was lost as to what i could see for my future. I was very confused and felt an un-ease and an uncertainty that i had never felt before. I had sacrificed a vitally important once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and i did not know what i would do with myself. I eventually found after several months, work as a Greenkeeper on a golf course. It was here that i discovered a new found enthusiasm for horticulture and nature. I decided in 2005 that i would make this my career as i loved it so very much. But in mid-2006, after the nightmare years that had gone before, my parents had decided that there were too many bad and upsetting memories in their home and decided to sell the house so that they could start fresh somewhere new. I was made effectively homeless with no way of finding the money to purchase my own home.
It was here that i had no choice other than to stay with a friend, and i once more had to leave a beloved job behind. For 2 years i wandered around looking for work, doing a day here and there with friends and friends of friends, trying to earn a living. I eventually found another Greenkeeping job which made me believe i could get back on the ladder and rebuild my career. But in 2007 we found out that my fathers cancer, had spread and had metastasized. Yet again he would need care and chemotherapy. Because my parents had moved away, they did not have anyone there to help them and could not afford carers. And as my mother had to work, i had to once again, leave my job and move to a new city that i had never been before. My female siblings had their own homes, children and married. My brothers on the other hand just moved as far away from the problem.
This was where the nightmare truly began.
This time my fathers cancer was inoperable and had spread to areas that required yet more chemotherapy and more radiation. In the course of 4 years he would fight cancer 3 times and undergo 3 more rounds of chemotherapy in all different forms. It ravaged him. Everyday, every week and every month i was on alert, whether it was allergic reactions to medication, an anxiety attack, vomiting, pains, insomnia, aggression, unable to eat or drink. I could not leave the city, i could not work beyond 5 miles away and in the end i knew i could no longer leave the house. I i lose count how many times the ambulance was called.
This literally took over my life, and had done since i was 20 years old. I worked tirelessly day and night for years to find ways to help him regain his health whilst my own was becoming more and more damaged. To the ppoint where depression had set in and took many years to control. It has not subsided even today, because the aftermath of my fathers ordeal took it's tole on all of us in our home. But never did my objective sway from trying to make my father have just a little bit of happiness and health. I'm sure everyone who has loved one suffering from this awful disease wishes them happiness and health.
Eventually his health did get better, as to the amazement of his oncology doctors. During this time i was setting down new plans to try and get my life back, to try and carve out something of an opportunity at my age to see if i could do anything to find a career in horticulture. But out of the blue something hit my father and it would turn out to be the last blow. And again my plans and goals quashed.
My father was a long time golfer, and he chose to return to his beloved sport at his local golf course. But during the game, he came home early with a very pronounced limp. He said it was just a twinge but a week later it had not changed but got significantly worse, he was in pain and needed to see a doctor. He was given painkillers but 2 weeks later he could hardly walk. He went to the doctor again who sent him for X-Rays, and found to his shock that an entire side of his entire lumbar region and pelvis, had crumbled away. Due to doctors giving him too much radiation on that area of his back years before, it has destroyed the bone. And now the crumbled spine was resting on his nerves causing him great discomfort.
Once more as his conditioned worsened I had to leave my job and make sure i cared for him at home because he could not move out of bed anymore. He was transported to hospital on occassion where he was given mild physiotherapy and had work done on his back to try to loosen the nerve, but it did not work. Everyday his spine was getting worse. 6 months later he went for his scheduled oncology scan but to also scan his spine, and to the doctors horror, a tumor had formed and was now engulfing his pelvis. Not only that, but it had spread to his bladder, prostate and lungs. It had also devloped itself into his hip. From that day, my father remained in his bed, where his spine became so bad, that he became paralyzed. His left leg was numb and he affectively suffered from non-stop chronic neuropathy. Even on the heaviest opiate pain killers the nerve pain would shoot through him, and each night, wake us all to hear his screams and his cries of agony. This last for 2 years, every single night. when he was at rest. My father did not have a full nights sleep for mnay years, and did neither myself or my mother. During the day my mother would work, and i had become his full time carer. But eventually my mother had to declare herself his carer and i was present day and night. We had a full hospital bed placed downstairs in our dining room where he stayed as he could no longer make it upstairs. His doctors advised him to opt for pain management at a special hospice. 2 days into his stay, he contracted C-Diff (Clostridium difficile) and was rushed to hospital because he had lasped into unconsciousness. Myself and my mother raced to the hospital and it was not until he was in a ward that we were told he was dead for 2 minutes in resuscitation but was revived. It was pushed onto the cancer being to blame but we were told by a doctor that it was a serious virus. This again had my nerves on tender hooks, as it did with my mother. Again foir several days we took turns watching him in the ward because we were told there was a very strong chance that if the drugs did not work, he would not last through the week. Eventually after a week they had got him well enough to come home, but told us that he had less than week to live apparently because of the cancer, and he was placed on an "end of life syringe driver". Without explaining too much, we had it taken out of him, because we were certain it was a serious bug contracted from the hospice. My father begun to get well again and was almost back to his old self. But what did not go away was his spinal problem. He ended up living another year. Over the next 6 months he became prescribed various immensly powerful opiates which he needed several times a day in increasing doses. And not only that, but he had developed bed sores which became large open wounds. Both myself and my mother had him on watch around the clock, because he was becoming weaker and sicker because of the illness but also the infections from the bed wounds and the amount of morphine drugs he had to take. You could say every minute of our day and most of every nightfor around 4 years, had become consumed with my father. This for me, personally, was my life. Nothing else existed beyind this.
Eventually his pain had become too great and he opted to go to the hospice for pain treatment. And it was here that he would suffer his first stroke. He had become unable to feed and drink himself, paralyzed and hardly able to talk. He needed now 100% full time care.
This was 2013.
He arrived home in June 2013 and now had palliative care nurses taken care of his needs. And it was now that he had all the family in the house.
But on July 18th 2013 at 9:47, he passed away peacefully. His 12 year battle had ended.
But unknown to me, was that with the death of my father, my own battle was about to begin. Age 32 at his death, i had 12 years of my life missing. Years that people around me, friends, family and others had created lives for themselves, carved out careers, started families, travelled the world, graduated from university, got married etc. And here i was, sat in my mother and fathers house, with absolutely nothing, left with 12 years of memories of sickness, torment, misery, sadness, struggle and every kind of anguish imaginable. I had sacrificed my entire life for my father and my family and never even thought about what on earth i was going to happen after the worst happened. Inevitably i lapsed into a terrible depression.
I had ended up in a city i never knew nor liked. In a city where employment was incredibly poor and opportunity non-existent. It was the place my parents had come to retire, but quite possibly the worst place for someone trying to start their life from scratch. Due to my fathers medical bills there was no longer an inheritance through a will, but a £35'000 debt left to us. My mother had to take equity from their home to pay it, therefore any help i could have been given to get my life back, simply vanished. In the 18 months since my fathers death i have applied for new education to regain my career, but without adequate work, no help and no money behind me, again i had to terminate it and catapoult myself back to an all familar place. Back to square one.
But a friend of mine, whom i have not seen since i was 19, recommended a website that offered lifelines to people who were in need of genuine help. And told me that my story was beyond eligble to seek that kind of help.
So here i am.
My goal, has always been to enter full time education to acquire the qualifications i need to build a career in horticulture. It it a dream i see every time i fall asleep at night, and what i visualise myself doing and where i would take myself.
I never expect anyone who has never met me before to suddenly donate any of their money to me. It is just one of those things to try i suppose in hope, because after all, i have almost tried everything else, so why not take up my good friends advice and see if the good heartedness of kind generous people really can help me achieve my dream and actually find happiness, and a life again.
Thank you x
