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Illness and the dysfunctional family

Don’t cry because it’s happening, smile because it will be over.

Keno Leon
9 min readJul 25, 2024

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Dear reader, what follows is a personal account of a fractured family ( mine ) in a time of crisis, I normally write about AIs, tech and software development, but this one is mostly for my own processing (every writer gets a few I guess ), still my hope here is that others in similar situations understand that they are not alone, that this is not normal and that a lot of pain and misery can be avoided with the right attitude, and well it might even be entertaining to read.

The Crisis

It all usually starts with a phone call: Your father is at the hospital, he’s been unconscious and we don’t know what will happen.

In my case I had a slight variation as I had chosen to go no contact with my estranged father a few years ago and so I got the call almost a month after the original crisis, this was a blessing. I was also not allowed to see him by my siblings for reasons unknown at the time and only got information through an uncle.

It brings people together, but not “together”.

As with many fractured families we were all not having family relationships before and barely speaking, but we found ourselves ( 2 brothers, a

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