A Brief History of Truss

I come from a British family.

Now, despite the general robustness of my countrymen, there is, unfortunately, an attendant pasty un-healthiness that can also be considered to be a national trait. We’re strong… but susceptible.

There aren’t many of us Trusses in this country. With the recent addition of my cousin Carrie, there are 11 altogether, including sons and daughters and grand-daughters. Although we aren’t particularly close-knit (especially as far as discussing health matters goes) we all care for each other and by-and-large, I think the rest of the clan is quite healthy.

However, the same cannot be said of recently past generations. My mother and my father both died of cancer. (She of Cervical, he of Bowel). My mother was the youngest of 11 children. With the exception of my Aunt Vi and Uncle Ted, who are still alive, they all died of cancer. On my father’s side I think it was mostly heart issues.

My mother and father differed greatly in their dealing with the disease. None of us (four brothers) knew anything of our mother’s illness. She kept it to herself. We knew that they (mum and dad) took trips occasionally down to the city for unspecified medical reasons, but we always supposed that this was for typical womanly issues. Issues that no English person has the remotest ability nor slightest inclination to discuss with ANYONE.


By the time we discovered (mostly because she wore hats indoors quite a bit of the time) what the matter was, it was towards the end. Because they lived up north and we only had infrequent contact except by phone, it was an easy secret to keep, I guess. Add to that the classic British stoicism engendered by countless war years and living on powdered eggs and you get a situation that although shocking in the main, never really came to us as a surprise in the end. She died a fairly lengthy and not very appealing death. She was cremated and has a plaque beneath a small maple tree in Little Lake cemetery.

By contrast, my father was on the phone the moment he found out. Well, in actuality he had been misdiagnosed about a year before with acute peritonitis. Had he known in time what he really had, the outcome may have been different. At any rate, it would have been nice to have had the chance to find out at least. I received a teary phone call late at night from my clearly terrified father. He was alone at the time and was distraught. I offered to drive to Peterborough if he didn’t want to be alone that night but after some second  thought (and probably a British trumpet blasting somewhere in his sub-conscious), he declined the offer. More British stoicism. I did go up the next day and found him somewhat calmer. Calm enough to ask me to get  hold of a bag of pot for him to help control his increasing pain (which had led him to the doctor in the first place).  I did get him the pot and I guess it helped somewhat. And no, I can’t get you some.

Without dwelling on it, he gradually deteriorated and after about six months he was gone. His last couple of weeks were spent in a hospice in Peterborough and towards the end it wasn’t pretty but fairly quick, I guess.
So that, briefly, is my recent past, family cancer-wise. Not an encouraging prospect, I suppose. Now, I must point out at this point that, according to most that I’ve read, if you are going to have cancer, the type I have is one of the ones you want. (There’s probably a joke about the Conservative government you could insert here, but damn if I can come up with it.)

Anyhow, prostate cancer is pretty treatable with an encouraging prognosis. In other words, I don’t mean to grouse without warrant. People go through this shit all the time. My good friend Gary lost his young wife, Carolyn, to a worse form of it just months ago. Right now, my main battle is with a certain amount of fear about the upcoming surgery and another battle that I have with letting others know about it all. I guess I am somewhere in between my mother and father on this. Intensely personal when it comes to things like sharing my problems, but in my gut, needing a little tea and sympathy. Having said that, I get an abundant supply of the latter from Brooke. I don’t like to whine. Except to her. Maybe that is reason enough to tell others; that she shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of these darker days alone. That is why last week, I gave her leave to tell her parents, Brad and Mary. This week I've told my brothers, mostly so they can run (not walk) to their closest F.I. expert and get the 2-point inspection. Later we can all discuss insertion technique. Oh, and today I told one of my many dentists. But only because he wanted to book me a cleaning in January. By January, bleeding gums might be the least of my worries.