Achievements for this weekend: 8 : pixeldiva

Achievements for this weekend:

8 shots of tequila in half an hour and no vomit or silliness, which is good. Also no lack of consciousness, which is bad.

18 hours of restless and ultimately unrestful sleep.

1 box of Mr Kipling's Mini Selection.

1 Sainsbury's "Be Good to Yourself" Penne Arrabiata microwave meal (and no, the irony is not lost).

1 chicken sandwich.

6 packets of Golden Wonder Rather Hot Chilli Crisps.

3 litres of diet coke.

13 episodes of Buffy.

1 episode of Dawson's Creek (Episode 21 of this season, despite having not watched since Episode 3).

5 telephone conversations with D.

5 text messages exchanged with D.

4 pages read of "Girl, Interrupted".

2 telephone conversations with my mother.

That's right folks. This weekend has been a weekend of avoidance. Bridget would be proud.

"Just don't want to deal right now.

Taking a little holiday from dealing.

Happily vacationing in the land of not coping."

Which is actually complete bullshit. I'm not happily vacationing anywhere. I'm procrastinating. I'm avoiding. I'm running away from the things I haven't achieved this weekend, namely:

Being able to go more than 4 hours (except when sort of sleeping) without crying.

Being able to phone my dad and wish him a happy Father's Day.

Those last two items are inextricably linked. I can't phone my dad because I don't know what to say to him. Because every time I try and figure out what to say to him I wind up with wet dribble marks down my top and yet another snotty hankie in the bin.

I've tried, and I can't even get the words "Happy Father's Day" out without my voice cracking.

It's not a happy day. It's a grey and miserable day, which is fine with me. It's sort of fitting, almost.

I want it to be a happy day. I really wish it was. Instead it's overshadowed by worry, and fear, and the inability to express these feelings.

A while ago I wrote about my dad being rushed to hospital because of a diabetic hypo. That wasn't the first time this year he had gone to the hospital in an emergency. The first time was a few weeks prior to that. My dad had come home from work and gone to his room to get changed as he usually does. Next thing I knew I heard thumping along the hall, and I got to the door of my room in time to see my dad kneeling in front of the toilet being sick.

Not such a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, except that my dad is practically never sick. I think I can count on one hand the amount of times in my lifetime that my dad has thrown up. It's a standing family joke that my dad has a cast iron stomach fitted with a non-return valve on it.

Except there he was, throwing up violently.

It didn't stop either. Four hours later he was still throwing up and my mum and I were starting to get a bit worried (insulin dependent diabetics and violent vomiting are usually not things that go well together), and after an hour of persuasion, we managed to get him to agree to go.

I can remember remarking on the irony of it being my dad who got to see the inside of the new Accident and Emergency rooms at the new hospital complex first. An hour later, leave the hospital, with them having proclaimed my dad as having a mild chest infection and possible food poisoning and my mum with a flea in her ear from the senior nurse for not having phoned our GP first.

Long story short: went to doc, got sick line for 2 weeks and antibiotics and went back to work. Until the morning of the hypo, where we found ourselves at the hospital once again.

Back to the doctor again and signed off for two weeks more and given another course of antibiotics to try and shake the chest infection which they reckon is still present and slowing him down.

Fast forward a couple of weeks more and dad is once more at the hospital. This time for a chest x-ray to check the progress (or lack of) this chest infection.

More weeks off work. Another appointment for a chest x-ray, and an appointment to see the doctor at the chest clinic at the hospital.

That was Thursday afternoon.

Thursday afternoon when they told my dad that the x-rays showed a shadow(shadows?) on his lungs that they could not identify, and that they wanted to do a bronchoscopy as soon as possible, and would Wednesday be suitable.

They left the hospital, came by to collect me from work and head to the supermarket so we could get something for dinner.

When we got back from the supermarket, my gran was waiting by the door, to tell my dad that the hospital had phoned and wanted him to come in before the bronchoscopy for a CT Scan. Exactly when wasn't entirely clear, she thought it might have been the next day, she wasn't sure, but she knew they wanted it to be soon.

At this point, I should probably point out that the usual waiting list for a CT scan can be anything between 8-24 weeks. So being asked to come in at such short notice is generally cause for concern, if not alarm.

The problem was that my dad was supposed to be going on the annual Able-bodied/Disabled club trip to Blackpool with my mum, leaving at 9:30 the next day, and everyone at the hospital seemed to have gone home for the night.

Later on, when my mum was packing (just in case) I went through to talk to her.

She knew as well as I did what being moved up the waiting list at that hospital meant, and I could see in her eyes she was just as scared as I was.

My mum and I, we're used to it by now. Even my gran. We have this sort of triangle thing going on where one or more of us is ill at any point. It becomes something that you deal with after a while. We each have our bad days, and our not so good days, and our days where we feel almost human, thanks. It's become one of life's constants.

Like the constant that was my dad. Even tempered. Quiet. Unchanging. 64 but looking 44. Jet black hair only just greying at the temples and hardly receding at all on top. Neither up nor down. Mostly minding his own business and moving along the middle of the road of life. Other than the odd cold or sniffle, never seriously ill. While the three generations of women in the house with him fell apart piece by piece, he was the steadying force. The one pushing the wheelchairs. The one carrying the shopping. The one doing the driving to the hospital.

The one who could always be relied upon to do what needed to be done. Whether it was driving us where we needed to go, or driving around to pick up food, or medication.

I know that it can't have been easy for him. Life hasn't exactly smiled on him, but through it all he's kept going. Big and strong, a gentle giant.

There has always been a special connection between my dad and I. I take after him much more than I take after my mum. My early childhood is filled with memories of the times my dad and I would spend together. From him reading Dr. Seuss to me, or Saturday afternoons spent hiding behind the sofa watching Dr Who, or our precious days out, where we'd go to museums and just wander.

So many happy times. Times where I could say "I love you daddy" when I kissed him goodnight.

Then came puberty, and well, my breasts began to come between us.

Gradually, I stopped kissing him goodnight, and stopped telling him I loved him, and our relationship changed. We could still talk for hours - about football, or computers, or any one of a million and one conversation topics. So long as it didn't include personal feelings.

In fact, the last time I remember him hugging me was the night that my parents told my sister and I that they were getting a divorce, and that was nearly 7 years ago now. 7 years where they separated, and divorced, and nothing changed, except the rooms they slept in.

And so, my mum and dad are away in Blackpool, in separate hotel rooms, the best of friends, and I am here, at home, with the conversation I had with my mother on Thursday night echoing in my head.

Words like "tuberculosis", "pleurisy", "emphysema" and "cancer" ringing through my head, along with the caution to behave normally and not to show how worried we are, because it won't change anything, and it won't help.

And so I sit here, scared to death, trying to find the inner actress my mum says I was aged 2, trying to find a normal way to phone my dad and say "Happy Father's Day" and not burst into tears, becuase that wouldn't be a normal thing.

I just don't know what to do now.

I don't want to make a fuss. I don't want to make a scene, or to upset him any.

I watch the clock tick away the minutes where I could get myself together and go to the shops and buy him a father's day card to give him when he comes back, but just the thought of it makes me feel kind of icky. I can't face the shops.

Maybe because I know deep down that there is nothing that money can buy that will tell him how much I love him and how much I wish I could tell him that. Nor can it buy a cure for whatever is ailing him, no matter how much I wish it could.

I've watched my gran go from being an active woman with a great love for her garden, to a frail shadow of herself, her daily goal the measure of gin she's given every night. I've watched my mother go from the carer to the cared-for. Both of them, fading before my eyes with every passing year, and that's been hard enough.

I just don't think I can stand to watch my dad fade away now too.

Achievements for this weekend: 8

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