#none of this was supposed to happen he was supposed to retire peacefully somewhere tropical in a couple years not get diagnosed w cancer

[yawn-emoji]

#who i was march 24 2022 and who i am now are completely different people. i remember crying in caffe reggio to zay sun and adiba because #my dad was in the hospital and we didnt know why and we werent even there to support him and my mom because we had travelled to nyc that #morning. and the whole trip was overshadowed by this sense of grief and fear and horror at what was unfolding back at home while i was #trying to pretend everything was okay and that i was fine. i never cry in public but i cried on the q train while visiting my coworker who #lives in manhattan and then i sobbed in a xi’an famous foods location in manhattan w my brothers because the cheapest and earliest train #home was that night and i had no idea what to do w myself #and when we got home finally we all knew what the diagnosis was but nobody wanted to say it not even the doctors. i dont think anyone used #the actual word cancer to us for months. they cloaked it in such technical terms so as to make it easier to swallow but it was still like. #an elephant in the room yk? nobody told us the stage either but it was a stage iv glioblastoma and i remember going on r/glioblastoma and #just crying reading all the posts abt how difficult this disease is. most projections were six months to a year and a half. a lot of people #even chose not to get treatment because of the high probability that it would make no difference to the prognosis. i have no idea whether we #made the right choice going w chemo or not honestly. only time will tell i guess. inshaAllah this will prove to have been the right choice #idk what im even trying to say now. i just dont reflect a lot on where i was when this started because it’s… almost too painful. i have #given up so much for my dad at this point and i still feel like it’s not enough but also i’ve been trapped by this sickness and i’ve given #up my life to it and idk how to rebuild myself from here. i need to move on w my life but what if these are the last moments w him and i #take those for granted by not staying home to take care of him and spend time w him. again idk what im trying to say here i just have no #idea how we got to this place. it still feels like some insane fever dream that i will suddenly awaken from #seeing pictures of my dad even from 2021 is the hardest thing. i have no idea what happened to that bright funny charismatic loving man. he #is literally a shell of himself at this point and i hate it. it actually turns my stomach sometimes because it all is so wrong #none of this was supposed to happen he was supposed to retire peacefully somewhere tropical in a couple years not get diagnosed w cancer #journal #illness tw