I may have wrote at one time that my father (and my mother at one point) was diagnosed with cancer. My mother went on to get reevaluated and found out she didn’t have cancer, and only had cancer markers. My father went on to get treatment around November or December of 2022.
He was almost finished with his cancer treatment and everything was going well, when he caught Covid for the first time. My father is 76 years old. Subsequently, the covid, in our opinion caused him to have a stroke the last day he tested positive for it. It’s in no doubts to us, that’s what happened.
Although, everything ended up very well after the stroke, and he received physical therapy for it as well as, speech therapy, he went back home to live alone. This may have been just this past February he received a certificate for finished radiation treatment and went home.
Two weeks ago, just one day, I noticed I wasn’t hearing from him as much. I called his neighbor to check on him, as I do from time to time when things seem off with him. She went over to his house, and she said he was telling her he was very thirsty and he needed to go to the hospital. Before I even arrived, she called paramedics, and I had seen his leg was skinned from the top of his foot to the middle of his thigh.
Fast forward past so much of the very gruesome sight, he told me he fell between his house and his porch. So, maybe a year ago he had his house foundation leveled. The house ended up settling in it’s original spot, but then the porch stayed where it was at, so there was a gap there between the house and the porch. He said he had fell through after walking out the door. Said he fell, and stayed there til it was dark because he couldn’t get out.
In my mind, I literally couldn’t imagine a freak accident happening to my parent.
Well, his leg got skinned. He didn’t tell anyone and it ended up getting infected with the tetanus infection. He was in the hospital for two weeks, and as we speak in a physical rehab to get him back walking again.
Trauma. Where do I start? Not only for him, but for me to see all that he’s been through. With the cancer, the covid, the stroke, and now an infection that almost killed him, because it really almost did.
Trauma stick with you. It’s like oatmeal, but except it never goes away, and it keeps coming back in different mental forms that just re-traumatize you over and over. It’s like the enemy that keeps coming back, or the bully that keeps coming back to knock you down.
This is something I’m personally working through, or trying to work through, in therapy. Although, it’s nothing I truly want to revisit.
This is more like the bubblegum myth, where you eat gum and it stays inside you forever.
I just wish this never happened.