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INTRO:
Commentator Laura Isensee has realized recently it's sometimes easier to keep scary things to yourself.
NARR
When my mother calls my father Big Daddy, she's only half-joking. We're not as Southern or tragic as a Tennessee Williams family.
But my father DOES head up an extended clan. He's the father of six and the oldest of nine children.
My dad is 61, and works long hours as an accountant in Houston. He's always approached family matters with the same exacting attention to detail he gives to a tax return.
Our house was always busy with six kids. It was hard for my dad to slow down enough to stop and listen, to listen to me… to pay attention just to me.
Three years ago, my dad received irregular results from a prostate cancer screening. He told only my mom and kept it a secret from the rest of us.
Then, last year, he had a biopsy. A week before Christmas, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He told no one.
Instead, he tackled the cancer with the same precision as he would a tax issue. He visited multiple doctors and talked with other men who had the same disease.
Then after a few weeks, he told my mom. Then my siblings. I was the last to know. He told me when he picked me up from the airport on a recent visit home to Texas.
The weekend was a blur: my sister's bridal shower, breakfast with my aunt, dinner with my grandmother. No real talk of cancer.
When I returned to New York, I did research of my own. Just like my dad, I found comfort in facts and figures, like 8 percent mortality rate. But the sentence, my father has cancer, was still frightening me for me to say aloud. It was even harder for me to broach with my dad.
Two weeks ago, he had the surgery.
Apparently, it was a success. I called him on the phone to see how he's doing.
TAPE
Isensee: I wish I could have been there at the hospital last week.
Father: I know but you were doing what you needed to do.
Isensee: I know but I wanted to be there.
Father: I know, laughs, you were with me in spirit and your spirit was there with me and you called me and so
Isensee: I just wanted to tell you Daddy that you've taken care of all of us for forever, I wish you would let us take care of you a little bit more.
Father: Well right now I'm being very well taken care of.
NARR
During that talk, my father opened up about the ordeal. He told me how stressful it was to decide on treatment, how anxious he was for his first surgery ever. I think it was a relief for us to finally talk about what he had gone through, largely alone, for the last three years.
My father is on bedrest now for three weeks, so he can recover from his surgery and travel to New York for my graduation. I feel like that gives me a role in his recovery. I think he knows that… that I'm helping him a little now. But it remains unspoken.
I'd like to break this silence and start talking to my dad more about these things. I have so many things I want to say to my dad and that I want to hear from him. This time I hope he'll stop and listen.
This is Laura Isensee, Columbia Radio News.