cancer care
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My Father – Part III: Learning to Live With a Tracheostomy
By the time “tracheostomy” entered our vocabulary, cancer was in my father’s breath, not just his reports. The trach, we were told, would help him breathe and clear secretions. What no one really says is that a tracheostomy doesn’t just change a neck; it changes a household – the sounds in the room, how you…
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My Father – Part II: Food, Germs and Guests
When cancer moves into a home, it doesn’t just live in the scans and reports. It moves into the kitchen, the bathroom, the bed sheets, the doorbell. It quietly rewrites how you think about food, germs and guests. In my head, after years of studying cancer, I knew nutrition and infection prevention were important. In practice, I…
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My Father – Part I: Learning to Be the Adult
Seven years of studying cancer in an American lab did not prepare me to face the real deal when it hit my father – thrice. His decades of smoking first led to a diagnosis of bladder cancer. It was minor and he recovered from the surgery, only to develop an aggressive laryngeal cancer less than…
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Trembling Fingers: Where Love Lives in the Space Between
She is frail. My energetic, smiling, vibrant mother—the woman who shaped my entire understanding of love—has been battling leukemia. Nine months of chemo and continuous transfusions for blood, platelets, WBCs have taken their toll. She is no longer able to sit up on her own. With trembling fingers, she beckons me. She wants water. The…