For a long time, death and illness and caretaking were part of my life. My dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma when I was fifteen and given less than six months. He managed six (torturous) years and two months before he passed away a month after I got married, five days after I moved 600 miles from home. I was a primary caregiver from the beginning. I learned to change tubes, how to care for him bed bound, transfer him from car to wheelchair. I saw him through countless rounds of chemo, a bone marrow transplant, radiation, and brief periods of "remission" when the cancer wasn't active but he would still break bones if he coughed too hard. I worked in high school, it was all I had time for outside of school and caretaking. I was so jealous that while other kids were saving for a new wardrobe or stereo, I was just trying to make sure we kept our heads above water. I saw his mind go and his liver fail. The last time he went to the hospital, he swore that I made him crawl from home. He didn't know who he was sometimes, he didn't know who I was. I went away to college, four hours, but was home several times a week, usually I'd drive home after classes let out, caretake through the night, and drive back for the next day.
I don't regret it.
But I find myself kind of freaked out. My dad died three years ago. That is the time I have had as a young adult to focus on some of my needs. And now, that focus has shifted. He wanted me to have kids right away. After the wedding, heck, before the wedding, he was telling me to get to it. I find myself missing him, but always for the first time, really wondering, yearning to know what it would have been like if I hadn't had to be an adult so soon. People keep asking me if I'm ready for the late nights, the responsibility, all that. They don't understand that I was responsible for him at night, his needs were first. Putting the baby first won't be a huge adjustment in that area.
There were other family loses during this time, including my favorite uncle, who was the only person who seemed to realize that I was still a kid. His death was sudden, a amssive heart attack. I found out about the baby on the anniversary of his death. I lost my godfather, my dad's childhood best friend, to cancer two years ago and see the agony his young girls face in moving on. I don't want to associate the baby with losses, but it is so hard because people say it. They say how we finally have something to celebrate. They ask if I'm naming it after them, and are surprised when I say no. I don't want my child to memorialize, I don't want them to feel tied to something that I can't hide caused me so much pain, even if it made me the person I am, a person I like to be.
I don't want to associate it, but I'm having a hard time. And doctors offices don't help. The hospital will be worst. When I first started working in the community, I had several anxiety attacks when I had to take clients in. That has gotten better, but the thought of being a patient freaks me out. I spent so much time in them, the smells and noises take me back.
I also think about what if I get sick. What will this baby have to do? How will it affect them? When they are a teenager will I expect an unfair amount because of what I had to do?
Hormones suck.
