hi everyone, i'm 18F and i just got back from my first year of living at uni to stay with my parents over the summer. my dad found out a couple months ago that he has a malignant neuroendocrine tumour in his duodenum, and that there is cancer in his bile duct and liver and possibly pancreas. we don't know the specific details of his diagnosis nor prognosis yet as his oncology appointment is next week. he has been extremely ill for a while however, and had to go into surgery a month or two ago to give him a temporary ostomy bag to reduce all the bile blocked by the tumour and redirect the flow of his bile around it. he developed pancreatitis after this surgery and this has become chronic. he was in hospital for weeks after surgery and we've had to take him back to hospital a couple times because he's been in 10/10 agonising pain and unable to eat anything. we believe this was caused by an infection and he came out of hospital after the course of antibiotics but he is still extremely ill. he can barely talk, sleeps most of the day, vomits most food he eats back up, and just lies there moaning and writhing in pain every day even with oxycodone and other strong pain meds regularly being taken.
he needs a lot of care and my mum does a really wonderful job looking after him. he's a bit selective on what he can and can't do when he does occasionally have energy to do something, like he can get to the kitchen to get a snack but he won't take the plate he had out on the side through with him etc. between me and my mum we act sort of like a maid cleaning up after him. i do fully understand that there are some things he can't do and that's totally okay, i think it's just the way he's acting towards us that makes it difficult to keep caring for him. my father has always been abusive to me and my mother, and i have both ptsd and bpd which were developed in childhood specifically because of his abuse. he has narcissistic personality disorder that is completely untreated, and the way that manifests in him is that he is very two-faced in his behaviour. sometimes he can be funny, charming, and a good laugh, but he is also very emotionally abusive and has destroyed both me and my mother's self esteem (he is always trying to make us feel inferior so he can feel superior in comparison).
he has been especially awful to us since he became ill. i've learned over the years that my father has "no-go subjects" which is anything involving anyone else's emotions, opinions, beliefs etc. because i've never had the opportunity to go NC with him, i've had to learn to navigate interactions with him and carefully steer conversations away from those subjects. the result of that is a very stilted, closed-off, almost colleague-like relationship with my dad but i've been burned one too many times to even attempt to be remotely open with him. although things got more complicated to navigate when my mother got involved with conversations as a) it's 100% her choice how she interacts with him and b) she's still somewhat in denial about the extent of his abuse, for the most part the system worked. there would be occasional episodes when my mum and him got onto a no-go subject but there was no direct abuse from him to me anymore because of the whole grey rock thing. unfortunately since he became ill however he's actively been hostile to both of us and there's nothing to navigate or steer around anymore. our poor dog is terrified of him because of how much he shouts at me, my mum, her, and he has started throwing things at her too.
it's a difficult situation because i would not wish his pain and suffering on my worst enemy. as much as i resent the bad parts of my dad and continue to live with very painful mental illnesses because of the damage he's done (and continues to do), i am also really genuinely grieving the good parts of him and the positive memories i do have, more and more as he gets further into the process of dying. but at the same time his actions are not okay. emotional abuse towards your loved ones is never okay, but that's the way my life has always been and i know he developed his npd because he was a victim of childhood abuse himself. doesn't excuse anything but there's a layer of complexity in his abuse towards us. physical abuse towards our animals however is genuinely irredeemable. there's no excuse for throwing heavy objects at a small dog just because it's afraid of you and barking because you're a threat to its safety. before that happened i was quite active in caring for him, making sure his needs were met as much as possible, but with how awful he's been i just don't know what to do anymore. yes, he's dying in an extremely painful way and i do genuinely feel so sorry for him. but he's a horrible, hurtful human being and i feel very little compassion for him because of what he's done. does anyone have any advice on how to deal with this?
