My Saviour - Tanner X Woods

Chapter 25 - Therapy

Woods' POV 

(At the therapists)

"My dad had cancer that was undetectable for a number of years and when they did find it, they told us it was incurable.

I had been away for the weekend and I had just arrived home. My mum took me out of the house and told me and I sobbed. My first thought was the fact that he would never see his grandchildren or see me walk down the aisle.

My entire life, I was striving to make him proud but he wasn't the type of person to make it known that he was proud. I never knew if he was or wasn't, so when I do something actually good and people say he would be proud, I just constantly question it, because I have no clue at all whether he really would be or not. That is so difficult for me to get my head around.

When he was diagnosed, they said he would have a year to live without treatment or two years with treatment. He decided to go ahead with chemotherapy and radiotherapy and it went well. The cancer didn't shrink but it kept it at the same size.

I made it my job to care for him all of the time. I would get home from work and cook him tea and make sure he was okay constantly. I would take him to bed at ten o'clock every Night and help him in the mornings to get up and get ready for the day. I made him breakfast and helped him get ready. It was so difficult. I never told anybody about any of it because I felt like nobody cared.

Neighbours would tell me that they were there if I needed them but I would just push them away and refuse any help because I believed I could manage. I cared for my dad like he was a patient and I shouldn't have done. He was still my father.

When he finally went into the care home, I was at work and I received a call saying he was going in and I was on my lunch break at the time. I ran to the office and tried to get out so I could see him but the door was locked. I was banging on the office window and sobbing so they would let me out. Eventually they did.

When I got to see my dad, he was at his house but we had to pack him some stuff. He wasn't really with it at the time. He had had a funny turn on the Tuesday and I was the only person staying over. I called my neighbour around to give me some help with him. We spent hours on the phone to the nurse but they didn't help at all.

When he finally got to the care home, he had settled a little bit but he decided he didn't want to be there and he hated it. He began to give up any hope. I would go and see him after work every single night and I watched him deteriorate. An old relative I never really knew all that well had been to visit him on the Sunday. I went to see him on the Monday and his health had massively decreased. I had to begin helping him eat and he couldn't move his pillows upwards. He couldn't do much at all. The Tuesday we thought he was going to pass but he didn't. He kept going. I kept trying to get him to eat but he just wasn't there it seemed. His physical body was there but he was just an empty shell it seemed.

I stayed over on Tuesday night at the home and took the day off work on Wednesday. I sat with him and read to him and I just tried to keep him calm. His breathing had become really bad and his body was clearly beginning to shut down. I slept in the arm chair by his side because I was so scared to leave him in case anything happened.

His sister had come down to stay with him on Wednesday and she spent the day with us. He couldn't talk very well if at all, but he said a few sentences every so often that would be really clear over the mutters and grunts. Often talking about wanting to be taken home or being left to die alone. On the Thursday, I had gone home to get some stuff for him and get something to eat and just generally get away from it all, while I was gone I received another call to say he was nearly gone. My mother had come to see me and she was taking a really long time to get ready and so I got there a minute late.