Family

Yesterday my grandfather went in for his normal checkup & they found a mass the size of a fist in his colon. They did emergency surgery to remove it and his lymph nodes to make sure that the cancer hadn’t spread. He made it through surgery just fine and is in good spirits although he is in pain. They won’t know until Saturday or Monday if he will have to have chemo or not.

Sometimes it takes something like this to realize the value of family. It doesn’t matter who’s pissed at who, or what else is going on at the time. Everyone rallied around at the hospital to see my grandfather before his surgery. There were about 20 of us, we took up nearly the whole waiting room. My grandfather was all smiles seeing everyone there.

I’ve had some issues with my family. It’s a bit dysfunctional (isn’t everyone’s). But, as I was sitting there in the waiting room with everyone, I couldn’t help but think how blessed I am to have my family. If it had been me in the hospital, they’d all have been there. I’ve had times when I felt like nobody gave a crap about me, but I really know that isn’t true. We’d all be there for each other if something happened.

Depression and Mania are a different kind of disease than something like cancer. Sometimes it’s hard for family and friends to understand how real it is and that it can be fatal. A lot of times people expect you to be able to control it – to “snap out of it” or “chill out”. I’ve felt like my family has left me to deal with the disease on my own many times. People are able to visualize a tumor, a physical injury, and things like that…but it’s hard to visualize chemicals going haywire in your brain. But – that’s ok….as long as they are there when it counts…when you can’t keep going….and I really believe that they’d be there in that situation. I think all of us who suffer from something like Bipolar Disorder or some other mental illness, need to be able to look outside our “in the moment” thoughts. A lot of times those thoughts aren’t rational…they aren’t reality. Hopefully having this written down will help me to remember that my family really is supportive, even if it doesn’t seem like it “in the moment”.

Family is the #1 most important thing in the world, other than God, to my grandfather. It always has been. Nothing makes him happier than to be with all of us, that’s one of the most awesome things about him. He loves us to no end. He believes he is the luckiest man on earth because he has us. I want to be more like him in that respect. I want to be able to remember how blessed I am to have them all on my side. Sometimes I feel like NO ONE is on my side…and that’s just not true. I really have an awesome family, dysfunction and all.