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Antiwork

Work and a terminally ill parent

My father has oral cancer that is presenting as ulcerated tumours on his face. He had it treated and was cancer free in July- we just found out its back. It is getting worse fast. He has become palliative. We are going downtown on Tuesday to meet with an oncology to see if immunotherapy is an option. It is absolutely horrific. I mostly feel I am floating. Needless to say work has been hard but I try. It's very hard to care about these work tasks. Sometimes I just want to scream at people “DONT YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING” but obviously I need a paycheck. In times like these, you see employers are terrible. Three days bereavement for immediate family??? That's inhumane. I've missed a few days here and there due to his illness (taking him to appointments in the city etc.) And many of his appointments he goes…


My father has oral cancer that is presenting as ulcerated tumours on his face. He had it treated and was cancer free in July- we just found out its back. It is getting worse fast. He has become palliative. We are going downtown on Tuesday to meet with an oncology to see if immunotherapy is an option. It is absolutely horrific. I mostly feel I am floating. Needless to say work has been hard but I try. It's very hard to care about these work tasks. Sometimes I just want to scream at people “DONT YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING” but obviously I need a paycheck.

In times like these, you see employers are terrible. Three days bereavement for immediate family??? That's inhumane.
I've missed a few days here and there due to his illness (taking him to appointments in the city etc.) And many of his appointments he goes alone. It's just the ones where there is lots of information or hard to hear stuff that I feel I should be with him and there has only been one or two. I have siblings and we try to split it up but it's hard. Anyways, my manager has been pretty nice about it and kept reassuring me that if I need to go to his appointments I can. So we finally got an appointment with an immunology doctor downtown and I asked to take the day off (I am using vacation hours l) to take him and my manager was sort of snarky. She corrected me and said she can try to accommodate it. I almost wanted to cry. I feel so beaten down. All the nurses I talk to can't believe I'm not with my dad every minute, my job seems to resent I need to be with my dad. And I am so so scared he will pass away and I wasted his last months being scared over a job. I worry about the work I will miss when he passes as horrible as that sounds. It's so fucked. Thanks for reading my sad ass antiwork post.

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