Last week, my stepfather, Bob Voss, began experiencing severe shoulder pain. He went in for a complete physical, and on Monday and my mom got the bad news: Bob has pancreatic cancer. He has six to eight months to live. Agressive medical intervention would, at best, prolong his life six months — a year at the outside, so he has elected for no treatment other than pain management. He and Mom have their faith and each other. I envy them.<\/p>\n
As is usual for me, I have avoided dwelling on this situation very much, and I’m not about to start now. But I did want to note that it was happening, and also say that a worse thing couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Bob is a wonderful, kind and generous human being, not to mention talented, ambitious and energetic. He bounced back miraculously from his stroke, and to have this happen just sucks. Of the three men who have tried to be fathers to me, he has done by far the best job. My real dad has never been able to get outside himself or his insecurities, and Harry Lange simply didn’t know how to handle the role, having come to it for the first time so late in life.<\/p>\n
But Bob has been unflaggingly concerned, giving, wise and strong. I hope that I can do something to make his final days a little better. I’m not sure what that would be, but I’ll be looking for inspiration.<\/p>\n
Of course, I’m also concerned for my mother. She comes from such a long-lived line; she’s outlived Harry and now, soon, Bob. Will she be lonely, worried? I guess that’s all a bridge to be crossed later.<\/p>\n
I hate this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, my stepfather, Bob Voss, began experiencing severe shoulder pain. He went in for a complete physical, and on Monday and my mom got the bad news: Bob has pancreatic cancer. He has six to eight months to live. Agressive medical intervention would, at best, prolong his life six months — a year at the outside, so he has elected for no treatment other than pain management. He and Mom have their faith and each other. I envy them. As is usual for me, I have avoided dwelling on this situation very much, and I’m not about to start now. But I did want to note that it was happening, and also say that a worse thing couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Bob is a wonderful, kind and generous human being, not to mention talented, ambitious and energetic. He bounced back miraculously from his stroke, and to have this happen just sucks. Of the three men who have tried to be fathers to me, he has done by far the best job. My real dad has never been able to get outside himself or his insecurities, and Harry Lange simply didn’t know how to handle the role, having come to it for the first time so late in life. But Bob has been unflaggingly concerned, giving, wise and strong. I hope that I can do something to make his final days a little better. I’m not sure what that would be, but I’ll be looking for inspiration. Of course, I’m also concerned for my mother. She comes from such a long-lived line; she’s outlived Harry and now, soon, Bob. Will she be lonely, worried? I guess that’s all a bridge to be crossed later. I hate this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2001-2002"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Tim Curran","author_link":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/author\/timcurran-admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Last week, my stepfather, Bob Voss, began experiencing severe shoulder pain. He went in for a complete physical, and on Monday and my mom got the bad news: Bob has pancreatic cancer. He has six to eight months to live. Agressive medical intervention would, at best, prolong his life six months — a year at…","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pNBEQ-1p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}