The King of Poisons

Arsenic, otherwise known as "the King of poisons" turned my father into a completely different man. His hair thinned, eventually disappearing altogether, and it looked as though he might do the same at any moment. His eyes drooped, making him look as exhausted as he always was. His head hung low, too heavy for his weak body to hold up for long periods of time. We knew it was a good day when he tried to tell one of his legendary jokes, always the funny man, he refused to let the disease take his humor. Half way through his joke he would get too tired to finish. Watching him fight this made me sick, there was nothing I wanted more in the world than to be able to take some of his pain away. This man wasn't my father, he was not the same man I had spent my entire life worshiping and trying to impress. 

Eight years after his leukemia diagnosis, I sit in my college apartment, writing this story. At home, in D.C. Dad is fighting his third cancer fight, this time head and neck cancer with radiation as the treatment. Every once in a while I get a glimpse of the man my father once was, but it's always fleeting and for eight years I haven't been able to completely recognize him. I've done everything in my power to concentrate on allowing these battles to bring me strength and optimism over the years, but most days that feels hopeless. What I have learned, the one thing I now know for sure, is that we all bleed the same, until we don't.