At a loss

摘要

He had thyroid cancer, we were told, and he would have to have the whole gland taken out. I remember how my father needed to restrict his salt, and craved it so much that he was tempted to start licking his skin when he sweated. I remember him spending several days isolated in the basement so that we would not be exposed to any leftover radiation from the iodine in his neck. And, afterward, I remember how he had trouble dosing his new hormone supplements, so that he was by turns lethargic, restless, tired, sweaty, agitated. It was so difficult to go back to his “normal self.” But for more than a decade, there has been no issue. His voice is hoarse, and he cannot do a loon call as he could when I was a child, canoeing with him on that vast morning lake. But otherwise he has taken his illness in stride, and the habits of drug dosing have become second nature to him, as ingrained to his being as the subtle scar across his neck.