About 2 weeks ago, my dad almost died. My family staged an unofficial intervention to get him to go to the hospital. For about a year he has been slowly and steadily wasting away from long COVID. But despite very visible and very concerning symptoms, he has refused to seek medical care.
My mom pleaded with him to go the doctor. Week after week, those pleas fell on deaf ears. And each of his sons reasoned with him to do so, as well. To get help. And he just…. would not.
He insisted that he felt fine. But he was and is - not fine.
Upon entering the emergency room he was promptly sent to the ICU. He had renal failure, was extremely malnourished, dehydrated and his prognosis was bad.
With kidney failure he was told he may be on dialysis for the rest of his life - however long that might be. They also had major concerns about cancer. And still do.
The doctors and nurses weighed putting him on dialysis. Instead they began an intense round of IVs, bloodwork, and various other treatments to try and prevent full organ failure. This after they quickly but methodically consulted, reasoned, and created a plan. Men, women, young and old. They worked to create a baseline. To save my dad’s life.
And little by little they brought him back from the brink.
He’s now home. And he is moving back towards a healthier state. But he is not out of the darkness by a long shot. And the cancer question remains in the background while he tries to recover from a year long skid into starvation and organ failure - a recovery with the goal to achieve a baseline.
Am I grateful that he is alive? Of course I am. I’m also really sad that it took almost a year for him to go and get the help that he so desperately (and obviously) needed.
To have the privilege - yes… there’s that word. He has the privilege and access to healthcare. It saddens me that he could say, “No, I don’t need this. I’m fine.”
In a time when women have been told that they don’t have bodily autonomy (again) and have been reminded that they are not equal to men (in the eyes of ignorant men) - I am saddened by how my father has responded to his situation.
Is it in his right to deny medical care? Yes. But to what end? His own death? Yes. But did he WANT to die? No.
To look a pandemic in the eye, give it the finger, and then say, “I don’t need treatment. I don’t need support and care.” It’s hard not to see the ego and apathy. The unmitigated arrogance from a life lived in privilege.
Yes, he has endured hardships. He has suffered. That’s the same thing as saying he is human. Who hasn’t?
Millions have died because of this very illness… but he’s different. He’s special. The rules don’t apply.
Did he ever say those words? “I’m better than it all.” No. But he didn’t have to. It’s his attitude. His lack of action and concern for his own state of being.
The ego of white patriarchy creates a false confidence sending men, women and children into hardship, suffering, and even death.
His ambivalence to his condition, is the epitome of having bodily autonomy. To have freedom and choice to kill yourself from apathy and indifference. Despite the fact that his body was wasting away and all signs from the outside looking in, pointed to dying and death… and he said “No. I don’t need help.”
Until he did.
He looks like a survivor from Auschwitz. In no way do I mean to minimize or trivialize the horrors of the holocaust. I’m not making an equivalence to my dad and the unimaginable suffering of the Jews. I’m reaching for a way to describe in albeit exaggerated terms, how awful he truly looked. How desperately thin, gaunt, and wasted he was. I helped get him downstairs out of the bedroom he had secluded himself to. He had been confined to bed for weeks. And I hadn’t seen him.
Bringing him out into the light, I was destroyed. His whole life, a man of big stature, muscle, and grit has been reduced to something that doesn’t even look humanly possible.
It took a lot for me not to crumble and weep right there. But I didn’t. Because in that moment, it was not about me. It was about my dad’s survival and my mom’s sanity.
She needed somebody to be strong in that moment, because she had already given every bit of strength she had. I went home and cried that night. After the kids were in bed.
I’m not afraid to let my family see my cry. It just wasn’t their weight to carry this time.
Again, I’m grateful that he is alive. And despite the tone of how I am writing this, I DO love my dad. And I think he is ultimately grateful for the care that he received. Because he finally realized how fucked his situation actually was. And he had medical professionals telling him that - not just his wife of 50 years.
Not just his wife of 50 years.
But that’s the problem. Where is the weight and authority of a wife? How can the commitment of 5 decades not be enough to warrant the respect of your partner’s concerns? Or children that love their father and echo their mother? Why are the words, their cautions, their cares not heeded? What creates that kind of willful ignorance?
We see it play out everyday.
Men of authority who view themselves as the head of everything are not listening to the world of human beings around them.
And it affects everyone, including these same men.
I feel a lot of things as my father works to recover. Relief, sadness, frustration, joy, hope, fear.
And yes, I’m angry. Not rage, not violence. It’s a fury of thought and reason bearing down on the will of man determined that he is right in the face of all evidence.
Because, I saw someone who could have gone and asked for help a long time ago - refuse to listen. Someone who waited to the absolute last possible minute to seek care and get help when other people are dying BECAUSE they don’t have access to that same care. And it took so many people in his circle to convince him of what was extremely obvious - that he was and is very sick. But he refused to LISTEN.
My mom is exhausted. And frankly, I don’t know how she hasn’t lost her god damned mind.
THIS is why women become jaded. Men like my father, a good man, let their ego, their misplaced sense of authority over everyone else, and their taught stoic bravado destroy the intimacy and connection of real relationships.
She has had to endure what I can only call abuse - as my father shut her down, yelled at her, told her to stop asking him to go to the hospital.
Meanwhile, he is telling me what’s happening with his body and I am doing the same thing she is, encouraging him to go seek help from medical professionals. Those pleas were met with concern for me. He didn’t want to upset me. Reassurances. He would be fine. Nonsensical stoic bravado shit.
Why? I still don’t really know. Somewhere between stoicism and denial lies a reason that doesn’t make sense. Men are indeed to taught to hide their feelings. To hold everything inside. And then when they can’t bare the pain they bust.
The week my dad was admitted, he gave her an ultimatum. He told her to not bring up going to the hospital again. He shut her down so that he wouldn’t have to listen to honest pleas for him to help HIMSELF. Hence, the unofficial intervention from his 3 sons. This after a year of waiting by his bedside, feeding him, helping him get to the bathroom, praying for him, sleeping when he would sleep and rising when he would rise. That cycle of sleep became completely destroyed. And my mom has suffered tremendously with my dad.
She endured all that so that he wouldn’t die. She showed him love and endured his ego so that he wouldn’t fucking die.
I don’t mean to triviliaze my dad’s existence. And at the end of the day, he has the right to choose how he wants to be medically treated. Or not.
But ultimately when ignorance and indecision takes a massive toll on everyone around you because you won’t do the simple thing staring you in the face… the onus ultimately falls at the his feet.
I just want everybody to have that same freedom. And I know there are people out there right now, that could desperately use that collective wisdom, care and life saving treatment that he got - and would gladly receive it in a heartbeat.
I see you.