The Dr. John Delony Show - Right After We Got Married We Knew It Was a Mistake

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU!   Show Notes for this Episode My fiancé had a traumatic childhood. He says it won’t affect our marriage, but I am nervous that it will. The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity - Nadine Burke Harris M.D. I've been married six years and knew it was a mistake from the start. Now we are expecting a baby. How do we do this? My father has stage IV cancer. I work in the medical field and my family bombardes me with questions about his prognosis, care and status. How can I set boundaries? Lyrics of the Day: "Up All Night" - Blink 182   As heard on this episode:  BetterHelp Redefining Anxiety John's Free Guided Meditation Ramsey+   tags: trauma/PTSD, marriage, relationships, counseling/therapy, disagreement/conflict, boundaries, sickness/illness, workplace/career   These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

On today's show, we talk about how to love somebody with trauma in their past. We talk about how to love your sisters and your mom and your dad when you're dealing with family illness. We talk to a guy whose marriage is bleh, and he's got a kid on the way, and he's got some hard decisions to make. Stay tuned. Hey, what's going on everybody? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Hope everything in your life is going alright.

It's probably not, but it's a good way to start from there, right? Why is that? It's probably not. Everything's probably not going great. I'm not trying to be ugly, James. James just started laughing at me like, oh wow, way to lift everybody's spirits idiot i loved it i loved it you didn't i saw kelly just go wow it was so good i listen i hope everything's going good and it's probably not there's probably something going on there's probably some

economic challenge or personal challenge or family boundary challenge. It's like you might as well come on and be like, hey, this is the John Deloney show. Your life probably sucks. It probably does, but that's alright. That's alright, because we're all having lives like that together. But, whatever. Your life

might be wonderful, and if it's wonderful, good. I'm glad it is, and I'm rooting for you. I'm cheering for you. Way go but someday soon just kidding i'm glad it's going awesome hey if you want to be on the show we talk about mental health relationships good news right optimism and joy and positivity i have some good news and positivity i'd like to hear it speaking of your gibson shirt i played our mutual friend cody's gibson sg and i'm smitten with it and so i kind of get it i mean i can't afford them because they're so expensive but here we go with the old we don't make enough money thing but hey listen number one i accept your apology i realized what that was

no it wasn't a problem and i accept your concession and And I was, so for the listener, James and I are in a new band together. We're incredible. I don't really know how to say that humbly, but we're incredible. The chances of us still being in this show next year is low to quite low, because we'll have a pretty incredible record deal. But I do love looking across the room at james ripping on that gibson sg and your little fender telecaster is just tucked nicely in its case hey you you had nice things to say about my telecaster your telecaster was nice i actually thought this morning um it'd be

cool if one of our shows you played a gibson i played that and then i thought i just can't do that but your telecaster is really nice what i'm saying is I think we've come to a mutual understanding about Gibson and Fenders. I feel like I'm at some big peace conference listening to this. This is like a love fest over here. I feel like we're at one side of the peace conference where somebody has conceded on their side, but the other person's like, I don't even need to concede because I was right all along. But I am good. All right, that's enough of you.

Hey, the cool part about James is that he also edits this show. See? He edits the show and he just mutes it. And he actually can cut and paste it to where it's like, I love Fender. And he'll just cut and paste it to say whatever he wants. I don't have to. I love Fender. I see what you did there.

Hey, so if you want to be on the show, give me a call. 1-844-693-3291. You leave a message. Let me know what's going on in your heart and your mind and in your life and how we can help. And then Kelly will call you and we'll put you on the show. Or you can go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K. All right, let's get right to the phones. What's up?

Cam in Chicago. Hey, Cam, what's going on? Hi, Dr. John. Thank you so much for taking my call. And I just will say that I am blessed and my life is pretty wonderful. That is awesome. Told you, James. Just kidding.

Hey, thank you for putting me in my place. I know that everyone's, man, people are doing well right now. It's awesome. So what's up? How can I help? well now and we're really happy. But I know that he never addressed any of his traumas in counseling or anything like that. So I'm kind of worried that his traumas might manifest in some way in our marriage. Is that something I should worry about? If no, how can I stop worrying? And if yes, how can I help him? Awesome question. Hey, dude, thanks for loving that guy. That's so good, man. When are y'all getting married? October 30th. Oh, man. So it's coming up sooner rather than later, huh?

Very cool. Okay. So what kind of trauma? Everything under the sky. So I've heard you talk about the ACE. Yeah, that's right. And I looked at it and I had him look at it with me. And I knew before showing it to him that he was going to be high on it because he's told me a lot of things.

What was his score? He's a nine out of ten. Whoa. Whoa. So everything under the sun, literally. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And he's an amazing guy, huh? Oh, my everything under the sun, literally. Yeah, yeah. Wow. And he's an amazing guy, huh?

Oh, my gosh, yes. He's incredible. So what would, if you were telling a story about him, what would you attribute that connection between a 9 out of 10? So for those who don't know the ACEs score, the Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale, I think it was developed by Nadine Brick Harris, just a brilliant doctor.

I think she's the Attorney General now in California. Not the Attorney General, I'm sorry, the Chief Medical Officer of California. Just an extraordinary practitioner, researcher. What an incredible heart. She wrote an awesome book called The Deepest Well. I recommend everybody read that book. But she came up with the, I think her and her team came up with the Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale. It's a 10 question scale.

And it's simple. Like, were you in a house of divorce? Did anybody in your home go to jail? Were you ever abused, et cetera? And and man if you have a nine out of ten the predictive nature that you are going to have some major challenges everything from cancers to strokes to heart disease to psychiatric issues etc is statistically through the roof right and then now you're calling me telling me you're going to marry this guy and he's wonderful. So if you were telling this story, how would you attribute that? What would you attribute his wonderful character

and nature to? Well, he always says that he always says that him and his siblings had a way of looking at the adults in their lives and like taking it as an anti-example. So that's sort of what he says. I'm not really sure.

I mean, he met the Lord, like, last year and got baptized. So he has a spiritual foundation? Huge, yeah. Yeah. Before that, he didn a spiritual foundation? Huge, yeah. Before that, he didn't at all. He didn't even believe in God. I've noticed a really big change in him since then. That's awesome.

How old are you guys? He's 29 and I'm 27. Okay. Wow, 30. Wow, wow. So here I'm 27. Okay. Wow. That's 30. Wow. Wow. So here's a couple of things. So if, if I'm, if I love somebody who's got a nine out of 10, but it's someone who I'm married to, one of my best friends, I would look at that as highly predictive, um, but not prescriptive and meaning not predetermined.

Right. but not prescriptive and meaning not predetermined. Right. So there is a, the recipe, all the ingredients are on the table for some challenges downstream. Okay. And it's something that I would highly, if I love this person and I would highly recommend that, that you create a life that would be supportive and preventative.

Sometimes trauma pops up in weird ways, like after your first kid, or after you get fired for the first time, or there's a big catastrophic event, whatever that looks like. And sometimes people are just resilient and strong and powerful, and they've got people in their lives and they've got a good spiritual connection and they really take care of their bodies and they sleep well. And so those of us who don't have a 9 out of 10 on the scale, what we end up doing is we flinch every time they're in our presence. And 9 out of 10, that's a lot. Most of us have somebody that we love whose parents were divorced or who may have experienced abuse or maybe were sexually assaulted in college or were in a bad car wreck. And what we do is we anticipate in that person's life and almost create a self-fulfilling prophecy

where we touch, like we walk around with velvet gloves. We don't want to ever disturb. And so we keep secrets or we don't want to bother them. So we hold on to stuff or we're really struggling, but we don't want to burden them because they've had a hard life and whatever. And so we hold onto this stuff. They sense that gap and then their alarms kick back up the old alarms that kept them alive. Does that make sense? And so what you don't want to do is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy where you spend your life looking at this person that you love through a magnifying glass, looking for evidence of trauma from childhood emerging, thereby creating a relatively tense home where you keep secrets

from each other. You don't tell him everything. You don't lean into it. You don't demand that he be a great partner and a great husband and somebody who shows up and somebody who works hard so he doesn't get fired. All these things because the past becomes this excuse. And I love the phrase, your past is a context. It's not an excuse, right? It gives you some ideas to why you may have an over inflamed body. You may not default to good sleep. You may withdraw when something gets heavy. You may have impulses towards anger or frustration or addiction, but that doesn't give you an excuse to then go down those paths. Does that make sense? Yeah. So here's what's going to be really important for you guys. Number one, you got to be really clear with one another. Real clear. Super honest. And I would recommend, I don't know how you can get more honest.

I would recommend you guys having a default setting of honesty and connection now. Have you all gone through any sort of premarital counseling? We have met with our priest like a couple of times. But I was planning on signing us up for like actual counseling with a counselor. So think of it as this. You've got a family history of heart disease and obesity. And what you're going to do at an early age, you're going to graduate college and you're going to be more attentive probably than most to not eating foods out of packages, to eating healthy whole foods. You're going to be intentional about moving your body and exercising, right? So, because you know you've got this stuff

in, you got the ingredients in the fridge, right? And you don't ever want to just start making it. Same thing here. So, you can set up preventative. And what it is, is just learning tools. He doesn't have a model of what a healthy marriage looks like. And you might not even either, even though you may not have a 10 or a nine on the ACEs score, you may not have a good picture of it either. So what y'all are going to do is you're going to go learn new tools. It's like y'all taking a karate class where you're going to learn to be ninjas. This is going to be learning how to be married, right? And it's not because you're broken, not because you're dysfunctional. You're going to learn to be ninjas. This is going to be learning how to be merry, right? And it's not because you're broken, not because you're dysfunctional. You're just learning new tools.

And then you're going to really default to creating a life early on where sleep is important. Friends are important. Exercise is important. Gratitude journals where you all tell each other what you're grateful for. Really being intentional with your spiritual communities, right? And then you, you not trying to protect him from your heart, your thoughts, your needs, your fears, your concerns. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. Have you found yourself doing that in your relationship? I don't know if I have been trying to protect him, but I would say that I sometimes do like think like, oh, is this a manifestation of his trauma? Like projecting that onto him kind of, um, do you see how that becomes a self-fulfilling loop? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Where you project it and then he thinks, oh, no, it's not. And now there's a gap. And then he goes back to some old habits to try to solve that gap to which then you go, there's the trauma. And then the loop just gets bigger and starts spinning faster and faster. Right. And so it's you trusting when you ask him, hey, are you doing okay? And he goes, I'm doing awesome. That you go, great. And you don't start reading into that, right? Or if he says, I'm doing awesome. And then you can then say, you haven't come to bed the last three nights and you've been sleeping on the couch and sends you down a tough path, I feel you starting to

withdraw from me, right? And that he cannot respond in anger. You leave me alone. But he says, you're right, I'm withdrawing. And then y'all can be right in the middle of it. Does that make sense? Yeah. That way there's no projection. There's you being honest, there's he being honest, and y'all are just in it and moving on. Yeah, that makes sense. And to his credit, I should have said this earlier but he really has done like a lot of work on himself like trying to cultivate a lot of like awareness of what he does and um you know sort of his his toxic thought patterns oh see and i since this calls about you really i know you're calling about him but really it calls about you, really, I know you're calling about him, but really it calls about you.

Yeah, he sounds like he, you can't have a 9 out of 10 A score and just dust your hands and shake it off and be like, hey, cool, I'm doing great. Right? He clearly has put in a lot of work, which is to his credit. Don't, don't superimpose your fears on him. Be honest with him. Put your fears out on the table and say, hey, I would get nervous about this stuff. I want to know what some of your toxic thought patterns are and some of your default settings are so that if I see them, I'd love to be able to put them on the table and say, hey, this is making me nervous or making me scared. It's when you feel nervous and scared and you decide, oh, I can't bring this up. That's the recipe for disaster. Or you bring it up and he says, no, it's not. Then that's a recipe for

disaster, right? It doesn't sound like that's the trajectory y'all are on. I want you to have peace going into this and y'all do the work up front when everybody's healthy, everybody's doing good. It's like going to the gym when you feel great, not waiting until you have the flu to start a workout program. But what a great heart. I'm so excited for you guys. Congratulations on getting married. After your wedding, shoot me a note that just says, hey, we got married. All is awesome here in Chicago. And Cam, we will be rooting for you guys. And for everybody listening, two big important takeaways. If you've got divorce in your life, if you've got, I'm filling in the blank here, family history of addiction, of heart disease, of whatever, of mental health challenges,

and you're doing okay, you're doing well, set up a life while you're doing well that will buffer for when the hard seasons come, right? It's like building your house on a good, strong, firm foundation so that when the hurricanes come, and they will come, it didn't blow over, right? You've got a strong foundation for when some of these things come back, right? Good for you guys. All right, let's go to Jared in Iowa. Oh, I just said two things. That was one. The second thing is don't project. Don't project your fears onto your partner. It'll melt them. It'll melt them. All right, let's go to Jared in Iowa City. Jared! What's up, dude? Hey, good morning, Doc.

Good. Hey, I almost made a subway joke, and then I realized it's not funny anymore. So, good for you, Jared. How old are you, man? 36. Did you get that growing up? Subway jokes? Yeah,

maybe the last few years or so. If you'd been my friend, I would have been pretty relentless with them. But I'm glad we're meeting now on the other end of Jared's not that funny anymore. All right, so what's up, dude? How can I help? Yeah, well, I've been married for six years now. Basically, I don't like it. I kind of hate being married. It's just been a terrible marriage the whole time.

We've never really gotten along. It's never been good. We've found out throughout the marriage that we both kind of thought we made a mistake right after getting married. get some some of your advice on um maybe how to uh better the marriage and and or um not let it affect our child man you said a lot there um congrats on having a kid and congrats on recognizing that the way y'all are doing stuff is gonna melt that kid right so when you say you don't like it it's never been good when anyone says the word never i would usually roll my eyes so help me what never means it's never been good what does that mean i don't like it i mean yeah basically um you know, we got married on a Saturday, and Sunday we both thought we'd made a mistake,

and, you know, Monday we thought maybe we should have gotten an annulment kind of a thing. Yeah, but that was six years ago, dude. You're six years past that. Right, and it's just we don't get along. We, you know, home is not a place where we want to be together anyway. Why do y'all choose to do that? Yeah, that's a good question. I guess from my perspective, I think we should be, you know, living large. We're both doing well professionally.

But for six years, y'all have decided to be miserable. Why have you chosen that? Yeah, I don't know. It's been tough. So I'm asking you, why are you choosing that? Well, I actually try to wake up every day as a new, with an attitude of, you know, hopefully it'll be a better day. And, you know, try and take steps with her to, you know, keep her happy, I guess. So this is all her fault?

No, I wouldn't blame it on her that's not that's not uh so answer my answer my question brother why have you you got married on a saturday you woke up on sunday and thought whoops and then monday y'all talked about hey we think this is a screw how long did y'all date before that um dated about a year and a half and then we're engaged for about a year and a half yeah here's the thing it wasn't a mistake. It wasn't. Y'all may have woke up on Sunday scared to death. You may have woke up on Monday terrified.

Found yourself like on a, on a roofing job with no tools, right? Y'all were in the middle of something. You didn't know what you're doing. You didn't make a mistake. Y'all made a choice after three years together. Y'all thought through this very, very well. And now for the last six years, you got a decade in with this person.

Six years, you have this, well, we shouldn't have, well, we shouldn't have. And I'm sitting here listening to you thinking, yeah, but you did. And so then what? And so it sounds like for six years, you guys have actively chosen to not cultivate desire to not just turn all the lights on and say what are we doing let's get

mad in love with each other it's just been like oh he's trying to keep her happy and today's gonna probably be a good day like and so i'm asking you you're you're a good professional right you say you're successful as a professional? Sure. Yeah, you're not dumb, right? Are you dumb? No. Yeah, you're not dumb.

Are you fun to be around your friends like you? Yeah. Do you like music or sports or things? Yeah, we have a good time generally so why when it comes to your wife have you chosen for a decade to be less than joyful not her why have you chosen that yeah i i uh i guess i don't i don't think that I've chosen that. Like I said, I try to make the best of things. Yeah, I know. Do you hear that language?

It's like, yeah, I'm not going to have knee surgery. I'm not going to do physical therapy. I'm just going to try to limp the best I can. But you have actively chosen to not do things to make this thing better. So let me ask you the other side. Why haven't you just moved out? Dude, why don't you just leave? This is your one precious life you got one and you've given a decade to well i just probably

shouldn't have like why why don't you just move out well all right and you know we've had uh conversations about divorce i know listen i don't care about your conversations. Why haven't you done it? Yeah, I guess I value the marriage vows. Okay, so if you So you value the vows, you value the commitment, awesome.

But you don't value the human on the other end of that commitment. And you don't value the guy who made that commitment. You see what I'm saying? Kind of. If you valued you, you would say, dude, I want to be madly in love with you. You would say, dude, we are going to have a marriage of reckless but crazy town sex a lot. We're going to laugh like crazy.

We're both going to do whatever we want. Like, we're going to have friends. We're going to have hospitality. We're going to have people over. We're going to choose that life. We're going to dance in the living room. We're going to go out with separate, I mean, we're going to, like, I'm going to hang out with my buddies. You're going to hang out with your friends.

We're going to go do other things, right? And it's like, well, we made this vow, so I just resigned to. Can I ask you a personal, well, we're asking personal questions. We're already in it. You're not attracted to her, are you? Yeah, I am. She's beautiful. Are you sure?

Yes. Is she attracted to you? As far as I know. Does she think you're dumb? I don't think so. Do you hear the answers to the questions? Y'all are in this weird stalemate why why do you think you made a mistake like for six years you've been living with this idea that we just man we just made us we screwed up well it's it's um you know prior prior to the marriage you know as far as dating and and

at the time of dating and engagement, our relationship was one way. And then after we got married, it's like a switch flipped. And now it's the other way. What's the switch? Again, we've talked about it a little bit. I't care what you talked about talk with me what's the switch that flipped she said she she told me that that um that uh when i were married so um she doesn't have to be nice to me

anymore well played well played so she said i got married and now i don't have to be nice to you i'm gonna be mean and did affect your intimate life probably absolutely okay so now it's like i got you so why if you were writing a story about your wife why would you think that she's choosing to be miserable because just being not kind choosing to not have great sex with the person you're married to, choosing to not do things with somebody and walk around like, oh, well, I guess we're just... Like, that's a choice to be miserable. Why is she choosing that? I don't know. I wish I knew.

You have known this woman for a decade. You've clearly had sex once because you got a kid coming. Like, you know her. Why is she choosing misery over joy? I don't know. That's probably the brunt of the issue. Okay, so here's the thing. Have you ever seen or talked to anybody. Have you ever talked to anybody?

Have you ever talked to a counselor or anybody like that? We did the premarital counseling, but nothing while we've been married. Yeah, that worked out great, huh? Right. Yeah, just a bang-up job that one was. All right, so here's the deal. Yeah. Tonight, you're going to go home and when she gets home

and I want you to turn all the electronics off, everybody's phone off, I want you to turn everything off and I want you to look at your wife and say we didn't make a mistake we've been lying to ourselves and talking crap for a decade now, for six years plus the three

we were married, we didn't screw up. We got married. And for whatever reason, don't project this onto her, project this onto yourself. Say the words, I have been choosing to be desire, to practice desire. I have chosen to go, and I've got one precious life, and I chose to spend it with you, and I value you, and I value me. And I want to completely from the floor up before this baby gets here, because here's the thing. Your baby will absorb all this tension, all this mayhem, all this chaos.

And if you think it's bananas now, wait till you got a one-month-old that cries all night and then craps everywhere. Right? All I can say is you're in it now, dude. And you've got one of two choices you can run like a loser with a leave a pregnant woman alone and you're not going to do that the only other choice you have that's not true you got two other choices one or choice number two is just continue living a miserable milquetoast life and congratulations dude you're going to wake up and be 55 you're going to be overweight your knees are going to hurt your back's, dude. You're going to wake up and be 55. You're going to be overweight.

Your knees are going to hurt. Your back's going to hurt. You're going to have headaches. She's not going to like you. You're not going to like her. You're going to look at too much porn. And then you're just going to be that guy. Or you can put a stick in the ground and say, today, I am going to do whatever I have to do.

Whatever I have to do to not save this marriage, to love you, to learn to desire you. And that means you're going to have to make a lot of changes in your life. And I want you to invite her in this journey. And probably if she's been sharing a bed with a dude who's like, man, we really screwed up. Should we just get divorced? She's going to go, okay, cool, whatever, dude. You're going to have to just start making some of these changes on your own.

You're going to have to go all in on you because you can't change her. You can't. But you can tell her, I will not give up on you. And I'm going to start this thing from the floor up. And hear me, dude. Why? Why do anything other than that to everyone listening if you're if you've committed your life to somebody why do anything other

than try your just damnedest to be crazy in love. Why would you do anything other than that? It's insanity. It's choosing misery. It's choosing lame. It's choosing bleh. Oh, my gosh. Fight for it, man. You go see somebody about bleh, low-level dysthymia.

You go see somebody about, I don't know, man. I don't even trust myself. You go see somebody about, I'm about to be a dad, and I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm scared about it. I think y'all are both scared. My guess is you both got stuff. You both got models of marriages that aren't great. So you don't have a good picture of what it looks like. You thought it was going to feel like this. She thought it was going to feel like that. And here's the thing, I promise you, if I was talking to her, she'd be telling me a story about you. And so your story is about her.

Just tonight, enough. Tonight, enough, enough, enough. And, dude, you're on a multi-year journey. This just doesn't get fixed next week. And it's going to involve everything from movement to your body to sleep to exercise to changing how you eat to you getting some friends to you go seeing a counselor to you guys deciding we're going to figure out how to love each other recklessly we're going to practice desire god almighty don't choose misery, people. Don't. Don't.

Don't. All right, we'll be right back. Dr. John Deloney Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, October is the season for wearing costumes and masks. And if you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going as Brad Pitt in Fight Club era

because, I mean, we pretty much have the same upper body, but whatever. All right, look, it's costume season. And let's be honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind costumes and masks more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social setting.

We do this around our families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can learn to be honest with yourself, and you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic, direct life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey and you can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey

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All right, let's take one more call. Let's go to Megan in Milwaukee. What's up, Megan? How are we doing? I'm pretty good, thanks. How are you? We are rocking and rolling. Rocking and rolling.

So pretty good. So what does that mean? Tell me what's going on. So my question for you today is, how do I set boundaries with my family after my dad's cancer diagnosis? He's the only medical professional in my immediate family. Oh, no.

What a great question and what a miserable place. So tell me about your dad, man. So my dad was such a hard worker. I mean, he was the type of guy that would help anyone out no matter what day, what time. He would always be there. So he was a guy who worked like six, seven days a week, never complained, always, you know, how can I help someone? And so this past fall, started getting sick, which he is typically never sick. So after a couple of weeks of in and out of the doctors, we found out that he had stage four renal cell carcinoma. So what's the prognosis?

Is there a timeline they've given you? So they haven't really given us a great timeline by any means, but like five-year survival rates aren't good for stage four. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, within a couple of weeks of that diagnosis, we found out that he had a brain tumor. So it's kind of been one thing after another. He was hospitalized for a couple of months and obviously navigating this in a pandemic has been-

A nightmare. Just kind of the extra layer, exactly. Yeah. And so what's your profession? You're a medical professional. Are you a doctor, a nurse, practitioner? What do you do? I'm a nurse practitioner.

Okay. Yeah, dude. So this is a simple fix, and it will feel hard. And if anybody, well, it's as simple as this. Do you have brothers and sisters? Who's contacting you? Everybody, mom, everybody? So my brother really isn't in the picture right now.

He's had his mental health issues over the years. So it's really my sister and my mom. Okay. And pretty much, you know, the calls initially were, what does this mean? How do I navigate healthcare? Kind of the logistical questions. And now the questions I'm getting are more, I mean, from my sister, she's called me numerous times saying, well, when is he going to die? Is he going to make it till his birthday? Like some of those questions, which of course, I don't have answers to. And my mom kind of goes back and forth between, you know, I just hear

fear and, you know, being overwhelmed constantly in her voice. And so she at times is saying, well, he's declining. I think he's going to die soon. And then other times it's, well, no one's giving us a straight answer. And you guys have healthcare professionals. And so sometimes they get looped into the you of healthcare. So you're trying, you're trying to offer support while offering information. But yet, you know, especially during the pandemic, like I'm not at these office visits. I've gone to, I think, one of his visits. I'm around and like I work next door to the facility where he receives his care. So like I'm physically nearby.

But I think the questions that they have for me, most of the time I don't have answers to or the answers I have are not, you know, I think for both of my parents, they're thinking that there's light at the end of this, that, oh, well, cancer is not going to be around his entire life. And I'm seeing the other aspect where it's like, he may not be around in the next five years. And so trying to have some of those conversations while also not wanting to overwhelm my mom and also not having the full story because I'm not at all the appointments. Yeah. what you do, to be faced with it personally and have it be unmooring because you may have talked to a thousand struggling moms or struggling wives who are looking down the barrel of becoming a widow, right?

Or you may have met with thousands of people who get a prognosis that is not good of whatever that happens to be. And then all of a sudden it's dad. And all of your academic training and all of your experience goes out the window because that's dad, right? And then everybody handles it differently. Just you describing your mom was, I mean, that's just ping-ponging through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' stages, right? Like, I'm denying this. This isn't real.

To, oh, my gosh, she's going to die today. To, you people, I'm angry. Right? It's just, that's just the, she's in a grieving state. And she will be for the next 18, 24 months until this thing probably takes his life. And so I think at the end of the day, the best thing to do is to sit down with your mom and sister and be as honest with them as you just were with me and let them know, hey, I am a nurse practitioner. One of the things I agree to do to people who I love is I will interpret. And so I'll be an interpreter. If somebody calls and says,

hey, my kid just got diagnosed with this, or I just got this meds, what does this mean? I will say this is what that means to me. Not going to give you counseling care for your kid. I can't be that person for you. I'm going to be your friend, right? I can't be my wife's therapist. I can't, won't be. If she says, hey, I got this homework assignment.

What does this mean? Then I might tell her, I might give that homework assignment to a client if X, hey, I got this homework assignment. What does this mean? Then I might tell her, I might give that homework assignment to a client if X, Y, and Z. But I'm not ever going to be her account. I can't, right? And so I think it's sitting down and letting your mom and your sister know, hey, I'm grieving this with y'all and I'm not in these appointments. I don't know. And this is my dad. And so I'm not going to be the nurse here. If you're comfortable with interpreting, right? If they can put you on speakerphone when a doctor is meeting with them, or you can step away and come over to a meeting

just to interpret, great. But you don't need to be the person telling your mom that dad's got 16 months. That doesn't need to be your job. You need to be the daughter who hugs her mom when your dad gets a bad prognosis, right? Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. You know, it's one of those things that I immediately feel like when I'm getting a call from my mom or my sister that I'm taking off the sister or daughter hat and immediately putting the medical hat on because I know they're a mess. And so, you know, you're trying to be like the strong person. And hey, not your job.

But on the other hand, I'm grieving this with friends and colleagues. Like, I don't feel like I can even grieve this with my own family. So here's a great, great gift you can give your mom and your sister is what you just said. This is my daddy, not one of my patients. And I'm not, I don't work in oncology. I don't, you might work in oncology, but it doesn't sound like you're a cancer doctor. And I don't know. All I know is that my daddy's really sick. It doesn't look great. And I need my sister and my mom. And if we get some news, some kind of medical jargon, I'm happy to interpret.

But I just need my sister and my mom right now. And so please don't ask any more medical questions anymore. I don't know. I just don't know these things. But I know that I need you guys. And I think that conversation among three women who love each other dearly and three women who are hurting and unique in different ways will be really powerful and important. And for whatever it's worth, Megan, I'm so, so sorry that your dad is sick. So, so sorry. Thank you so much. He's a good guy, huh? Yeah, I mean, he's a guy that he doesn't say much, but, you know, he truly,

it's, you know, he gives the shirt off his back. He sounds like a six to seven day a week working Midwestern male, right? Yeah, and so, I mean, for him, like, obviously, I worry, obviously, the cancer diagnosis in and of itself I worry about. But, you know, he went from being an independent guy to a feeding tube and a walker. And so, I mean're trained to work through these situations. I want you to allow yourself, whether it's with your husband, hopefully it's with your sister and mom too, allow yourself to just sit in the devastation of this powerful, strong man who carried us through life now in a feeding tube. There's a part of that that has to be witnessed. You've got to go through that process. Holding this at arm's length like you do with your patients is a recipe for this thing hanging on to you for the rest of your life.

And so don't rob yourself of the grieving process. Get right smack in the middle of it. And it will make you an empathetic caretaker moving forward. It will make you a great sister. But most importantly, you get to be a celebrating daughter of a guy who carried the family through and is slowly, slowly leaving us, man.

I'm grateful, grateful for your call. And we'll be thinking about you guys. We'll be praying about you guys. I think it's going to be a powerful conversation for you. I'll be praying about you guys. And, um, yeah, I think it's going to be a powerful conversation for you. I really do. And cancer sucks. I hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. By the way, tell your dad that you love him him make sure you tell him that a lot not as nurse Megan but as daughter Megan

make sure your dad knows that write him a letter so he can read it tell him what a great guy he was what a great example he was what a powerful example he was all those things let him know oh man alright so as we wrap up today's show let's see here man let's get some good lyrics to wrap up today's show let's see here man let's get some good lyrics to wrap up today's show

oh man hey James did you ever listen to the Blink-22 record Neighborhoods no okay it's got one of my favorite guitar riffs of all time even through all the metal and punk

it's a slippery, good, really just remarkable guitar riff. One of my favorite songs ever. It's off the 2011 Neighborhoods record. It's a Blink-182 song. It's a very different Blink song. It's called Up All Night, and it goes like this. Everyone wants to call it all

around our life with a better name. Everyone falls and spins and gets up again with a friend who does the same and everyone lies and cheats their wants and needs and still believes their heart and everyone gets the chills, the kind that kills when the pain begins to start. Did I get this straight? Do you want me here as I struggle through each and every year and all these demons, they keep me up all night. They keep me up all night. Hey, put the bricks down, everybody, man.

Don't let those demons keep you up anymore. Right here, Dr. John DeLong Show.