Perspective.

[Sutter16]

Thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family

 

[cajal]

All the best to your dad and everyone else in the family. I'm a cancer patient myself, and it's tough seeing your loved ones react to that type of illness. Hopefully you can enjoy some moments with your dad.

 

[PensFan6687]

All the best to your dad and everyone else in the family. I'm a cancer patient myself, and it's tough seeing your loved ones react to that type of illness. Hopefully you can enjoy some moments with your dad.

I hope you beat it. It never is a good thing to go through or experience.

And thank you and everyone else for your comments. I appreciate it.

 

[Mr Jiggyfly]

My dad has terminal cancer. He has weeks, and at most a month at this point to live. I have averaged 4 hours a night of sleep, becoming a walking breathing zombie. Losing a parent is not easy. Where am I going with this? Perspective. Prioritizing and understanding what is important and what is not.

Yes, we have experienced an ugly backlash towards our team concerning the Matt Cooke hit on Erik Karlsson. I don't want to go into how ugly the hit was or if it was intentional or not on Cooke's part. All I ask is we look at these comments made towards our team and fan base with an open and empathetic mindset. These are passionate fans who are hurting. They are going based on an emotional high. Some are just in it to cause a rukus, and love the drama. Others are basing their comments on emotions. We all know how emotions can impact our thoughts.

We can be better than this. We can be supportive, understanding, and caring. It's hard for people to be angry at a fan base that doesn't fire back. I choose to accept their anger as a way of healing. Is it the best way to get it out. Not really, but I can't speak for everyone. I can only speak for myself. I was angry that my dad was dying and honestly, it's getting me no where. I want to be happy. I choose to be happy. I suppose I needed to make this post, because I need to realize that. I need to put it out in words and really work hard on looking at what I do have.

Like our team. We have a great group of guys on this forum and we have a great franchise. We're spoiled. Yes, they can say whatever they want about our team, but we know that we didn't hurt Karlsson. We didn't want this. The team isn't playing them again until the final week of the season, so there is no purpose or value in having the Pens take out Karlsson. We know this. They can think what they want, but in the end, we know better. We can rise above this or we can be lowered to some of the negative comments made our way, which have nothing to do with the injury at all.

In the end, I don't care what some people say on the main board. It's online text fodder. I am going to focus on my time with my father and the fact we have a pretty good exciting team. And that we have no reason as a fan base to be apologetic for. I am sorry for what happened to Karlsson. I truly am, but guys get hurt all the time. I hope for a speedy recovery for their player, because guys like Erik make this game exciting. There is no value in seeing him hurt.

I just lost my mom to cancer last January and she was my rock. The one person I could tell anything to without being judged. When I found out she had cancer I felt like someone just hit me with a sledgehammer. It was weeks before I could even wake up without wanting to put my fist through a wall, but I knew she couldn't fight cancer with me being such a mess, so I got my **** together to be there for her and take care of her.

The doctor gave us some hope she might make it, but a few days after New Years she collapsed and was taken to the hospital. I was ill with the flu and felt so much guilt because I wasn't there when she collapsed... the next day my aunt called and told me the doctor said she was terminal and going to die. I ****ing lost it and I have no idea how long I laid on the floor until my wife finally helped me up.

Two days before she died, I had to celebrate my daughter's first birthday in a hospice. While my family sung happy birthday to my daughter, all I could see was my mom drifting in and out of consciousness and it took everything in me to hold my **** together.

I know all about the stress and worrying you are going through... the helpless feelings... the anger... questioning why... the sleepless nights.

It's been a year since she died and I still have nightmares where I try to save her and she dies over and over again... last year it was hard to cope, but I knew I had to keep getting up and pushing forward because my wife and baby daughter needed me to hold it together.

I've talked to a number of people who lost someone to cancer since my mom's death and they all echo what I found out for myself... You learn the pain never goes away... the wishing and hoping never stops either... but you slowly discover how to manage your feelings better as time moves along. The trick is cutting off the negative thoughts as quickly as possible and replacing them with positive ones.

The worst time for you will most likely always be at night when you are alone with your thoughts. You have to find ways to distract yourself... watching TV... reading a book... whatever it takes to put your focus elsewhere.

Learning how to confront and manage your demons is going to take time and there is no timetable for grief. Coming to terms with what happened is going to be difficult, but there is no way around it.

The best advice I can give you is to get through one minute, then the next. That's all you have to do for now and you are spot on, hockey is just for entertainment and means very little in the grand scheme of things, but it can be a great distraction to help manage the pain.

 

[Darth Vitale]

That's rough, Jiggy. Sorry to hear about that as well. Glad you're managing better.

 

[golfortennis]

Sorry to hear about your dad, OP. I don't post much in here, but really, this is one post worth replying to.

It kind of reminds me whenever I get really po'd in a thread on a forum, any forum, and need a little perspective, I go look up a thread in a Detroit Tigers forum from April 16, 2007. You want perspective(if you don't have something like the OP's situation of course), try reading a thread that starts out talking about the shooting at Virginia Tech, to realizing one of the frequent contributors was a student there and hadn't logged in, to realizing and confirming he was one of the people killed. That will make a defenseman's achilles injury, or a pitcher's lack of velocity, pale by comparison.

Godspeed to your dad.

 

[JWells16]

Sorry to hear about your dad, OP. I don't post much in here, but really, this is one post worth replying to.

It kind of reminds me whenever I get really po'd in a thread on a forum, any forum, and need a little perspective, I go look up a thread in a Detroit Tigers forum from April 16, 2007. You want perspective(if you don't have something like the OP's situation of course), try reading a thread that starts out talking about the shooting at Virginia Tech, to realizing one of the frequent contributors was a student there and hadn't logged in, to realizing and confirming he was one of the people killed. That will make a defenseman's achilles injury, or a pitcher's lack of velocity, pale by comparison.

Godspeed to your dad.

Wow.

 

[Mr Jiggyfly]

That's rough, Jiggy. Sorry to hear about that as well. Glad you're managing better.

Thx CV. It's difficult to re-hash stuff and I was going to just not say anything, but I know how important it is to read/hear that you aren't alone... Hearing how people further ahead in the process dealt with things, helped me out tremendously.

I just wanted the OP to know he will find the strength to get through it.