The Day I Started Lying to Ruth (opens in new tab)

I was fresh out of college. I had just landed my dream job. I was living at home making really good money so I could get myself on my feet and pay down college debt. My dad was a runner and healthy as can be. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late winter and was dead before Christmas after chemo and surgery ultimately failed. He was 46 and I was 23.

At the time I was almost numb. I was sad, but not as sad as you think ahead of time you would be in a situation like that. It was only with the distance of time that I realized how depressed I must have truly been.

I don't know how old you are, or what else you have going on in your life, but even if you think people can't help you, surrounding yourself with people that care about you is vitally important. I don't have any great insights other than to invest time and effort into the relationships with people who care about you and whom you care about.

In time, the loss of my dad has become a part of who I am. If there is one positive outcome it is that it has certainly helped me set priorities in life. I realized through that experience that possessions, money, promotions, career, etc... all the things that we think are important are so meaningless in the grand scheme of things (though it's shockingly easy for me to get complacent and forget this lesson). People are what is important. Love and caring for our families and friends is one of the only things we have that transcends time and space to make a difference in another human being.

Depression doesn't feel like grief or anger. Depression is the emptiness, the numbness of not feeling anything.

You don't "recover" from the loss of a loved one. You don't get back to where you were before. You don't "get over" it, nor should you want to. Your life has changed and there is a big hole in it. But you do adjust to it. You do learn to cope with it and find a new way to live with it.

Sorry if that's not uplifting, but it's what I found.

My mom died to melanoma in August. The first days and weeks are the hardest. It gets better, but the article's last paragraph really hits the nail on the head: it's those random, special moments that you had that will get you. Whether it's a movie that you used to watch together or an activity she loved doing, those moments are the worst because, like you said, no one knows how you feel.

Life isn't fair and it does fucking suck, but you've got to look forward. Live your life now and in the present. Reading stories like this help and I find them therapeutic almost. It's not an easy experience losing someone too young to cancer and being able to relate to someone's story helps/helped me feel less alone about it.

When my mom passed, I felt like I was supposed to feel a certain way - overwhelming grief.

I felt that, plus a bunch of other things. Even some "selfish" things like feeling glad the ordeal was over. I felt bad about feeling things like that and had a lot of "internal arguments" about that.

A breakthrough came when I gave myself permission to feel whatever I wanted to feel, even if it was "stupid" or "selfish" according to arbitrary moral standards. And that those things didn't mean that I loved or missed her any less. Less judging, more feeling.

Everybody's story is different. That was just part of my story in case it's helpful to somebody else. Maybe you can work a little bit of it into yours, or not.

I hope your story gets better - I think it will.

You have to figure out how you feel, so that these feelings do not rule you forever. It will take a lot of time, a lot of pain, and even more patience, but you have to remember that a hard year or longer is little compared to your whole life.

Life does suck, and there is little you can do about that, but it is also wonderful. If you manage to live with all the bad things, you will be able to spend your energy on making life more wonderful for yourself and people you care about. Not only is this what your mother would have wanted, it is also what you want, under all the pain.

Good luck. I'm very sorry for your loss.

Unfortunately, I have some experience with this topic, although a decade ago. Much like parenthood, you'll find everyone has very well meaning, yet typically useless advice, so don't take it personally when they won't leave you alone or they sound out of touch. And, here's my contribution in the genre:

"There was just the same distinct sensation where nobody has any idea what I feel like"

Oh, I bet your family has a glimmer of an idea. Spending time with them, just doing "stuff" with them, even just talking or emailing, will help. The funeral-industrial complex is heavily monetized and optimized for massive profit simulation of what you actually need. So don't expect that wearing a suit for two hours while paying multiple kilobucks will have much effect, or worry if it doesn't. Then again, however pitiful it is of a simulation of whats needed, funeral rituals do at least imply the right track, "increased familial interaction" for awhile seems to help quite a bit. TLDR the funeral will be a waste of time and money, yet it is none the less sorta pointing in the correct direction, so whatever you normally do with your family, do more of it for a bit, you'll feel better.

Also its your head, don't let people tell you what it should be thinking, as long as its not hurting you. So don't sweat not following the grieving steps in the precise order for the correct amount of time at what they claim is the correct intensity. Whatever path you take, you'll get there your own right way eventually.

Hang in there. If she were anything like my father, then one thing your mother likely worried about was that you would feel this way when she was gone. The more positive you can be looking forward, the better she would have felt.

Here's a great story about Alexis Ohanian who had to endure that pain as well. It was really helpful for me to be able to relate to someone like that who I already highly respected. http://fourhourworkweek.com/2013/09/17/alexis-ohanian-reddit...

I'm very sorry for your loss.

It's been 4 years since my mom died of cancer. She fought it for 4 years. You will recover from the grief, but it takes time. I remember the numb phase clearly. Grieving is a process. A professional psychologist can help it go faster.

Life sucks for you now, but it will get better.

My Mom died of ovarian cancer 1 year 11 months and 1 day ago.

What did I learn?

* Quality of life teeters on the edge of a nail. One day things can be great, the next you're looking into the abyss. Although this can seem dreary, this is more reason to enjoy the health and quality of life you have today.

* There is never a wrong time to go after the things you feel are important. When I found my Mom was diagnosed, I disengaged from work for a good couple weeks thanks to a great manager (and, thankfully, a pretty convenient lull in strong deadlines). After much soul searching, I knew that life was too short to work at the large company I was working at, and it was time to pursue my dreams of being self-employed, something I knew I wanted to do full time since I was ten years old. Seriously, I knew I wanted to be self-employed even back then. That was over 2.5 years ago, and I am still happily self-employed. My Mom's illness gave me the perspective I needed to stop worrying too much about certain types of failure, especially since I had been saving up a reasonable emergency fund in case my self-employment experiment failed. Thankfully, it has not!

* Steve Jobs's fantastic Stanford commencement speech lucidly talks about this realization: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." To be clear: that does not mean YOLO, nor does it encourage making unwise decisions. But the death of my Mom was the ultimate in sobering reminders of the importance of this thought, and since that reminder it has shaped many parts of my life.

As someone else commented, whatever emotions you feel are okay, as long as they are not hurting you. Surrounding yourself with any friends and loved ones is the path to healing, even if they don't understand what you're going through. Find those that will stick by you and not judge, or at least will listen to you.

I'm sorry for your loss. My father passed away in December of 2012 (after a 9 year battle with cancer). In fact, I posted on here mere hours afterward in regards to a goodbye blog post someone wrote to their father that was submitted here. While things have been difficult, life will continue as it always has. Try to remember the good parts and celebrate their life rather than mourn their loss.

I went through this when I was 18. It sucks and you will always miss them, but life will get better. Not the same as before, but as good. All you can do is put one foot in front of the other and keep plodding on. It's a cliche but time really is a healer.

I was declared in remission from cancer in April 2013.

My stepdad died of cancer in April 2013.

My mother-in-law died of cancer in August 2013 (we had gotten married exactly one week prior so she could be there)

It's not the same experience, nothing can be. But I felt what you describe. Empty. Numb, but distraught at the same time. Happy that they were at peace and horrible that I felt that way.

New things fill up some of the void, but there are still days where I want to curl up in a ball and just stop for awhile.

You've been emotionally wounded. You'll heal. There will be scar tissue, and it will take a long time, but eventually there will be days where all you think about is the good memories and not the bad.

I lost my mother two years ago yesterday and can sympathize. The first few days/weeks are the hardest because in many cases the pain is too fresh and it hasn't hit home yet. It takes time.

I found myself depressed and found that speaking with someone and working out like crazy made a massive difference--other than getting me in shape. Working out helps w/ serotonin production.

You should give yourself some time, but after a few weeks, think about seeing someone if you find yourself getting angrier or sad than you usually do. I would have never said it before, but it makes a difference.

> Life. Fucking. Sucks.

I'm going to be reinforcing your feeling that no one understands how you feel.

I'm really sorry about about the death of you're mother. Death however, is part of life. People die, and people close to you will continue to die at an increasing rate until it is finally your turn. I understand that you are grieving and that losing a loved one (especially a parent, child or partner) is an extremely painful event. But that doesn't mean that all of life sucks.

My father died of pancreatic cancer and it was a rough seven month from the time he was diagnosed till he succumbed and a difficult time afterwards. I sympathize with your numbness and lack of explanation.

The only answers that experience left me with are:

1) Life is fleeting and I want to jealously take advantage of every day with my loved ones.

2) Were life not so fragile, we would not appreciate it like we should.

> What's the point of explaining what I'm going through to anyone? What can they do?

I'm a little late to this party, but this is really important: it's not about having the other person "do" something that will magically make you feel better. It is the act of explaining how you feel that is in and of itself therapeutic. I know it doesn't make any sense, but it's true. It has to do with how we are wired to be social creatures. The act of talking to a fellow human being and having them listen is woven deeply into our psyches. That's one of the reasons that the internet is so addictive. But it is also helpful to have an actual living, breathing human being doing the listening instead of some abstract entity on the other end of a TCP connection. So go find someone -- anyone -- and tell them how you feel. Trust me, it will help.

Loss of a loved one is so very painful and difficult.

You can get back to it.

I did the opposite decision 9 years ago - I started a PhD on cancer detection out of pure idealism, completely ignoring money as useless. Later I realized that I need large sums of money to pursue the grand dreams I had, hence I started multiple e-commerce companies (that can be almost automated) to get the necessary cashflow for independent research on what I deem important (cancer, multiplex sclerosis etc.). You are already in the position of being able to fund things that matter - now it might be a good opportunity to seek people that can help you getting your dreams of a better world come true.

I know a few people that founded successful businesses and later they removed themselves from most of the duties except for ownership and started to pursue their visions, such as prolonging human life, organ replacement etc.

It's _NEVER_ too late to start living your dream, be the best you can be, give the best you can give. Whatever you did before doesn't matter. Life is lived forwardly not in reverse. Sorry for the platitudes. People like Alan Watts can say it better and in more depth than me: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alan+watts

Why am I alive? What am I here to do? These are important questions, and everyone needs to answer them for themselves. We are of the universe, and we are witnesses to the universe. We are the method by which the universe can reflect upon itself.

Honestly, unless you have expensive hobbies you are passionate about, if you have enough money then you should shift your focus away from money and more towards finding happiness in your life.

There's nothing wrong with making lots of money, if you're also happy with what you're doing. But if you think you'd be happier doing something more worthwhile, then go for it. It doesn't have to be medical research. You could work on developing tools that support scientific development - things like programming tools or machine learning technology. You can still make a lot of money in those areas. You don't even have to focus on science, there is intrinsic value in politics, art, culture, education, communication, etc. Or sell everything, keep as much as you need to set yourself up doing something you enjoy and give the rest to cancer research.

Whatever you want to do, just making money for its own sake doesn't make any sense from a pragmatic point of view. Once you've ensured a stable modest lifestyle, extra money does not really increase your ability to enjoy life significantly. I am not very rich, but I have learned to cook, and I cook to my own tastes. So I get really great food every day. Alcohol is pretty cheap if that's your pleasure. Drugs less so - but spending a lot of money on drugs is bad for you in the long term. Having money helps attract sexual interest, but confidence and social skills work just as well. Money only helps get more frequent lower quality sex. High quality comes through deep mutual understanding and accommodation with you partner. You're way better off spending time investing in personal development so you can learn to build good quality relationships.

The one thing money can reliably buy you is status. It's very easy to cling to the notion that status has significant intrinsic value, but it doesn't. Status doesn't help you make friends or find love or solve your emotional problems or be happier. You might think having low status will make people ignore you or look down on you, but if you're confident, if you believe in yourself as a smart guy, that will never happen. True self-belief renders status obsolete.

Money based status is ultimately just a social competition that some people care about and some people don't. It's a shared obsession that means about as much as any other shared obsession. Your bank balance is like a high score on World of Warcraft. To some people it's the most important thing to them. But, to those on the outside, it's obvious that the obsession is unhealthy and adds little to the obsessed one's life.

I think this every day. I even bailed on a job to do a foundation degree in medicine but finances and circumstances killed that dead.

However its probably better if someone takes a pile of money from society through a business and dedicates all profit to research. Look at Gates for example. If you are qualified in the subject you're likely to be a health service or corporate drug peddler at best. If you can generate clear revenue you can hire these people and focus on something.

FWIW - it can be done. What you describe is very similar to the situation I faced some years back.

Similar feelings motivated me to make a change, which is how I ended up working day-to-day with the late stage cancer patients I mentioned upthread.

It's definitely not an easy change (and not a cheap one, either) but I'm pretty sure I'd make the same choice if I had to do it all over again.

But your company is paying taxes and employing people so they can put their kids through college, pay taxes themselves etc. Not everybody can be researchers. You're doing something valuable.

> I could have been spending my smarts on something, anything, useful like medical research

Whenever our short lives are maintained to be the end-goal we will only reach meaninglessness or delusion. Despite the likelihood of inviting downvotes, I must say that an investment in eternal wealth is the way to go. I'm referring to coming to faith in God. [Matthew 11:28]

    > But I won't

So do.

The really nasty question is how one can actually make an impact on something truly useful like medical research. It's not nearly as easy to figure out where our efforts have the most effect in medicine (or any form of science, really) as in ad-clicks.

pivot your company/tech into clinical trial recruiting/enrollment. According to Tufts university (too lazy to find the link)80% or so of all clinical trials for new drugs are under enrolled: not enough patients to get the data. This delays approvals of new life saving products, and also inflates costs exponentially. Use your app/ad/site and parlay that into getting people matched up with clinical trials or something! edit: you can also create apps that help clinical trials collect data from patients easily, such as a pain survey app and the data they enter goes right to the investigators, and also to the CRO and sponsor

If you don't feel that it's appropriate, flag it and let the mods decide.

Crawl back under your desk and sleep some more, then eat some stale pizza and continue hacking.

Who needs a life anyway?

'Why' questions are always the hardest.

Peace be with you on your journey!

I found this story immensely enriching and thought-provoking, which is (in theory) why I read most of the things I read. Win.

It is a commonly made point that the crowd here work on "trivial" things. I think the OP injects some perspective.

Relevant content to Hacker News is "Anything that satisfies a person's intellectual curiosity." It's not just about technology, it's about interesting things. Which, I think, is what makes HN as valuable as it is.

On an unrelated note, your username means "is whining/complaining" in my native language (Slovenian) and I found that interesting given the context.

I agree, but a mechanical explanation is that there a lot more people on HN then before and a lot less technical people. 20 up-votes would be 2 in the before time.

In my experience, the "lying" was not directly that, nor was it even omission. It was simply providing small, though often false, hopes very similar to what her oncologist did toward the end of the story telling her to hold off on chemo for one more day. It's a delicate balance the oncologists must deal with as depression is a very real issue, and sometimes their goal is quality of life until the end.

This is completely off-topic, but:

I was at a talk last week where a politician (local school board guy) explained his engagement with the public thusly: We're trustees. We tell you what needs to be done; we tell you how much money it's going to take; we let you make the decision.

It feels exactly like how the doctor went about explaining their options. And I like it.

I was thinking this, too. It's hard to say for sure what I'd want in that situation but I think sincerity helps because eventually when good news comes it makes it much more believable than coming from somebody who never gives you bad news.

One day I am going to find out the same thing about mine. He almost died a few years ago, so I contacted him on facebook, to see if it was something genetic I should be worried about. It was necrotizing fasciitis, so no worries.

A dead parent is a loss that happens once, but a parent that rejects you happens constantly, every single moment of your shared lifetime. The consistency of the selfishness is what gets you. No matter how often you forget about it, one day it is there again. This birthday was ignored too.

I grew up envying the ones whose parents had died. More recently, I've met people with abusive parents. So, we sit around middle ground.

Not exactly HN stuff, but it was nice to read your comment from the perspective of a fellow tech in a similar situation.

Perhaps the thought of trying to become a good/better dad when it's your turn might help reduce the anger? I don't know you (or how old you are) but thinking how you would bring up your kid (if that is what you'd like some day) could help you right now. I had a talk once with a friend in the same situation and he found even just saving some money for his future kid made him feel like he was already being a good father. Just a thought...

Your Dad let you down so badly, I feel for you. It seems like he didn't spend enough time with you to bond, I'm sure there were so many other issues in his head that you will never know about. You did well to keep trying as you did, it's understandable you gave up in the end. The pain you feel is a testament to your heart and soul, I expect it will fade but never quite disappear.

I've been through a similar situation. An important part of the grief was to accept that my father would never be the one he was supposed to be. He would never fill the role I expected.

> When I first started, several friends speculated that it might give me a deeper appreciation for my own health, and "imbue me with a new vigor for life"

Yeah, this is basically, "When you think stories actually reflect real life accurately".

The deeper appreciation and vigor for life thing does happen. It's just sort of over-represented because it does double duty as a pretty good plot device.

There's nothing wrong with you if it doesn't happen to you, just as there's nothing particularly wrong with the hundreds of faceless medical staff busily and competently doing their jobs at the hospital where the ER drama is taking place.

I came here to say thank you for posting as well. You are so right: "this is a fate that most of us will face (if not directly, on behalf of a loved one)". If you'd care to read a bit more I highly recommend this controversial book based up on a true story: 'Love Life' http://www.amazon.com/Love-Life-Ray-Kluun/dp/B003IWYKD0 Edit: A film was made as well, called 'STRICKEN'.

As human beings, we learn by observing the fates of other human beings.

When we encounter a fate that is easily recognized, and assuredly an unenviable fate, there is no ambient curiosity gifted to us by our ignorance. We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends.

The normal psychological response to this sort of thing most certainly is not: wash. rinse. repeat.

You can't spend too much time on the frontlines in a pitched battle like cancer, and find yourself filled with a burning desire to experience the struggle first-hand. Jack Kevorkian's form of therapy isn't the greatest idea ever conceived, but for special circumstances, it might sometimes apply. One critical detail of supreme importance, to keep in mind: As a permanent decision, it should never be applied to temporary circumstances.

Within the specific context of this anecdote, and the benefit of the author's recall serving us as hindsight, I think, the moment when he noticed the sclera icterus was late in the game, but a conscionable moment for non-theraputic intervention. Arguably, she had already passed her own threshold moment, when she started eating oxies like candy, and wryly deflating strangers attitudes with a malign gallows humor about the fact that her apparent pregnancy was actually a side-effect of terminal liver failure.

Sorry, I don't know why you were down-voted. The loss of a loved one, no matter who or what that is, is always difficult.

The article is very moving and I can't imagine how difficult it is to watch a loved one go through such suffering.

And your story is a nice tribute to a faithful, loving being. It reminded me of my own friends from a while ago in my life. It's good to know your dog was loved. Good luck with the future.

morons who downvoted you are probably just very poor souls who have missed in their lives on the great happiness of having non-human members of family. I sorry for them and sorry for you loss.

I'm sorry, friend. Reading your post, Kosh was truly a wonderful companion.

That was very touching, I am so sorry.

My mom has cancer. She loves to keep in touch on social media.

Who cares if it's not easy? It's important.

There was a day when we sent men into space just for the challenge. I don't think that merely doing a lot of difficult and complex medical research is beyond our power.

If it would ever happen to me, I'd prefer ending it myself when I reach the end of the line. Just a few weeks ago a local elder couple did the same thing here. I do understand it's easy for me to say as I at least have a choice to end it with the assistance of doctors.

I feel for you losing your parents together like this. I am glad that you were able to gain something positive out of the experience.

Or live a life worth living. Find out what the meaning of life is. It's not nothing.

Don't believe the standard trope that pharma prefers treatments vs. cures. I worked in oncology R&D in big pharma. Every single person there from management on down sincerely believed the drug candidates they were identifying and working on might be cures one day. The oncology drug development process in a strange way mirrors the experience cancer patients themselves (and I speak from experience-- lost my dad to pancreatic cancer when I was just starting out). You have these really good days, where you have data that says you might be on to something. That things are looking up. Maybe this time it will be different! One in a million chance! And you have those bad days, where it all seems to be falling apart. All the while through the ups and downs you know in the back of your mind that inevitably (well something like 98% of the time anyway), the data from the first clinical trials will come back, and the drug you thought was going to change the world isn't any better than anything else. Maybe if you get really lucky, the drug adds 3 months to patients' lives so it's not a total failure.

So you pick yourself up after 5 - 8 years of work, and start all over at the beginning in the hopes that this time will be different. That is the reality of cancer drug development in a pharmaceutical company. There is no smoke-filled room where the managers say, "oh no, we can't pursue that it might cure people!". Even if people were so warped as to think that way, you can comfort yourself in knowing that biologists are so ignorant of the basics of cancer, they wouldn't know how to distinguish a cure for a mere treatment if they wanted.

The reality is that cancer is biologically complex and ferociously difficult to cure. People seem to often use the "war" analogy (as in "the war on cancer"). If it's a war, we're still using pointed sticks and rocks and cancer has intercontinental ballistic missiles, special forces, and fighter jets. Every once in a while, someone stumbles onto a stronger piece of wood or a heavier rock.

Reminds me of these two, both well worth reading:

"How Doctors Die" http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die...

"How doctors choose to die" http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/feb/08/how-doctors-c...