My Dad!

This is my Dad and he is the first thing I would like to bare all on.

When I was 14 years old my father was diagnosed with Leukemia. On finding out I was terrified of loosing him, but as time went on and I saw him go through chemo and radio therapy I lulled myself into a false sense of security that all would be fine. When he went into remission for the first time I thought that everything was fine and we would never have to deal with anything again. However, the cancer came back and we had to deal with it all over again. He was in remission again for a few months before being told that the cancer had come back which was just before Christmas in 2004. We spent Christmas day in the hospital with him while he was suffering quite badly from the chemo, little did we know it would be the last Christmas we ever spent with him.

This is my Sister, Dad and Me at the hospital on Christmas day 2004.

In February 2005 my dad was told that the cancer had become terminal. When I found this out I was devastated. Even though my dad had been in and out of remission and my initial thoughts were that we were going to loose him, actually having that affirmed scared me more than anything. I remember initially thinking I don't want to know how long, this was because I knew I would just count down the days and panic as the time got less and less. Also, I worried that if my dad lived longer than that I would start thinking everything would be ok but obviously I knew that would never be the case.

Over the next 9 months we had our last holiday in the lake district, celebrated my nieces christening, celebrated my sister's birthday, shortly followed by my 18th birthday and then in November 2005 my father passed away. Although I knew it was coming I was still completely shocked when the day came. I also felt a lot of guilt, I was petrified of loosing my dad so really struggled when going to visit him at hospital or talking to him about his illness so didn't spend a lot of time with him before he died, which I regretted and felt horrible about when I knew I would never get to see him again.

Ever since I have really struggled opening up about how I feel about my dads illness and his death. I have only ever spoken to one person about this all and that was my boyfriend. However, nearly a year ago we split up and I'm hoping that this post is the first step to helping me open up to more people.