My dad has been going through some difficulties with his health. Lately, most of our emails back and forth are about his latest test results and what they mean.
That's a weird place to be as a son, but not entirely unexpected when you are the child who became a physician. Whether you feel comfortable in the role or not, you become the default medical translator.
I try to embrace the role: like the requests during visits home to replace hard to reach light bulbs, this is an opportunity to be useful in ways he cannot be for himself.
It's even become a point of pride for him all these years later: Buddy, he seems to relish telling his physicians, spare me the details; instead, you can tell it to the doctor I raised.
While I'm not terribly invested in my identity as a physician, I know better than to deny him parental bragging rights.
When I was barely three months into my first year of medical school, I returned home for Thanksgiving to a very different family dynamic. That summer, during a family vacation, my parents had shared that my father had been diagnosed with a health issue that was on the back burner - something that might require surgery "in the next 5-10 years."
Since the summer, it appeared symptoms had worsened and disease had progressed. Dad's latest studies had gone from moderate to critical, and a major surgery was being scheduled for several weeks later.
I no longer had the luxury of regressing to my least mature self while at home; I was now expected to be a pillar for my mom.
As the eldest child, my father was suddenly confiding where the safety deposit box keys and insurance information were located, and that he had used savings to pay off the mortgage to eliminate that source of worry for mom.
There was a morbid undercurrent to our talks as we walked the neighborhood - a sense he was counting on me to be present after his surgery if he did not survive. Paradoxically, he seemed to have made his peace with this possibility; he exhibited a calm brought on by his planning to ensure my mom would be well cared for in the event he didn't make it.
He did make it. After an extremely frightening, life-threatening complication, he has thrived in the two and a half decades since his surgery.
By serendipity, his health crisis coincided with the sale of the company he worked for and an unexpected new lifestyle: early retirement. As he recovered, he defined a new role as a stay at home dad.
We elder three children were out of the house in college or med school by this point, but my youngest sister (almost 12 years my junior) was still in elementary school and very much at home.
The dad I'd grown up with left home early and stayed at work late. We seldom ate dinner before 8pm.
The dad my youngest sister grew up with drove her to and from school every day; never missed a game or event; and was inseparable from his youngest daughter.
Theirs was a fundamentally different relationship. She informed him of her first kiss right after it happened. He still has no idea when mine occurred (nor, these many years later, do I intend to tell him).
When she finally left home, dad reinvented himself anew as a substitute teacher in the public school district my three siblings and I had attended. Mom, who had been a kindergarten teacher in the district for over three decades, would raise a critical eyebrow as my Johnny-come-lately dad regaled us with stories of "his students" during our visits home.
In the end, she embraced his newfound identity as a teacher since it kept him young and engaged. Stay at home father, then substitute teacher - he had found something to retire to, and that kept him busy, productive, and out of her hair.
The point of this long and circuitous story is that, in recounting the details, I realize my father was only slightly older than the age I am now when he had his major surgery and entered early (if involuntary) retirement. He surprised himself and the rest of us by liking it.
Dad's entry into the club was reluctant, forced on him by a health crisis.
If I am to be my family's second generation to FIRE, I sincerely hope it's my choice, on my terms.
Comments 4
Life is at once “always on your terms” and “never on your terms”. Life already lived, is by definition history and immutable. Life yet to be lived is mutable. Legacy does not control.
My father died after a fulminant case of pulmonary fibrosis aka he slowly suffocated over 5 months as his lungs turned to leather. The diagnosis was triggered with a trip to mile high Denver. The treatment is heart lung transplant, unavailable to someone of his age and physical condition. I (the first born doctor son) got to be the one who squared it and tell him he wasn’t getting out of this one and gave him the choice. He could die intubated, ventilated and sedated, swollen up like a balloon fish or die being able to communicate with his family. Once honestly informed he chose. Life to be lived is mutable.
Author
Gasem,
Sounds like you were in a position to do the hard, correct thing in the advice you provided your dad. He’s lucky to have had your counsel before it reached crisis levels – there are so many cases like your dad’s where the family gets a deer-in-headlights look as I inquire about intubation in the ED for someone who will most likely never come off the vent. Breaks my heart every time.
CD
Thanks for sharing your insight. I had a similar revelation lately when I realized how little my Dad worked at my age. He seemed old then but now that I’m there I don’t consider it so old. Funny how my definition of old keeps changing.
Your Dad has a lot of reasons why he should be proud of his awesome son – not just that you’re a doctor.
Author
Thanks for the kind words, WD.
Old = my current age plus 10. I recall my grandmother talking about “los viejitos” (the elderly folks) who lived next door in her condo. She’d cook for them, take out the trash, and check on them regularly. It was years before I realized they were only three years older than she was. Age is very much a construct.
Fondly,
CD