David Raubach: I want to thank you for joining us on today’s episode of the Cancer Project podcast. We’re very privileged to be joined by Caitlyn Tharp today. She has a story of perseverance and also sadness um with her dad going through a diagnosis of glyobblasto a few years ago. Glyobblasto is a tumor that impacts about 12,000 people in the United States each year and it’s one of the most difficult aggressive cancers to treat. Caitlyn, thank you so much for being willing to join us today.

Caitlin Tharp: Of course, I’m really happy to be here.

David Raubach: So before we get started, tell us just a little bit about Caitlyn Tharp. What should we know about you? Where you live, your family, where you went to school.

Caitlin Tharp: Okay. So, I am from Ada, Oklahoma originally. Um went to school at OU. Now, I live in um the city with my husband and two kids. Um Jackson who is almost three and Blakeley who just turned one.

David Raubach: Okay. So, and and describe the personalities of your children.

Caitlin Tharp: So, Jackson is hilarious. He is all boy. Um, but he’s also really sweet and tender and loves just to be around mom and dad. Um, but he also loves to go get out in the mud and get dirty. Um, he’s great. He loves to dance and is just goofy. Keeps us laughing all the time. And Blakeley is super sweet. She’s um the snuggliest baby ever and the chillest baby ever. We’re just really blessed.

David Raubach: What is the thing that’s been most surprising for you about being a parent? What what’s kind of been most unexpected?

Caitlin Tharp: Um, that’s a good question. I would say, um, no day is the same.

David Raubach: Okay. Yeah.

Caitlin Tharp: I feel like they’re constantly surprising me. Um, but also just how rewarding it is. Like people tell you, you know, before you have kids, oh, it’s the best thing you’ll ever do. But it it really is.

David Raubach: So, do you think is your is your son who’s the oldest, would you say that he’s a bit of a mama’s boy or is he okay?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. I mean, he loves Camden, my husband as well, and like loves to play tackle and catch with him and stuff, but he’s a mama’s boy for sure.

David Raubach: So, going back to your childhood. So, you were born in Witchah.

Caitlin Tharp: Yes, I was born in Witchaw, Kansas. Lived in Derby, Kansas, which is a suburb until I was in second grade. And then my dad’s job brought us back to Ada where I grew up.

David Raubach: So, describe growing up in Ada, Oklahoma.

Caitlin Tharp: Small town Ada. It was honestly like a great place to grow up. Obviously, I didn’t know any different, but um going to Ada public schools, like I had a great experience. Um had lots of great friends, was really involved in dance and um different things. But um I would say it was a good childhood.

David Raubach: Yeah, that’s good. And then you went to the University of Oklahoma. And uh what did, were you a dancer?

Caitlin Tharp: So I was on I was on OU Palm but I wasn’t a dance major. I actually majored in human relations.

David Raubach: Okay. Yeah. But you were on the Palm Squad.

Caitlin Tharp: Yes.

David Raubach: Okay. That’s great. So is that a that Palm Squad experience? Is that something that you uh are hopeful that your daughter does or you’re like…

Caitlin Tharp: Um I’ll be happy with whatever she chooses. I think it would be really fun if she was a dancer, but um I also don’t want to put that pressure on her.

David Raubach: And I’ve seen uh you’ve got your kids rooting for the University of Oklahoma now. I’ve seen…

Caitlin Tharp: Of course sooner born, sooner bred all the way. That’s how I was raised. So, we’re raising them the same.

David Raubach: So, talk a little bit about um growing up in Ada and your and your family, your dad. Did you have siblings? What What did What was your family dynamic like?

Caitlin Tharp: So, I had two older brothers. We were each six years apart. So, my oldest brother was 12 years older than me. Um, so we weren’t close in the sense of like we didn’t do a lot of activities together. Um, but as we got older, we got grew a lot closer. Um, but having two older brothers, I got thick skin pretty early on in life cuz they teased me a lot and I won’t say they bullied me, but you know, they made sure I had thick skin.

David Raubach: And what um, describe your dad. What What are What are some memories that you have maybe of that time when you first moved to Ada? To your second grade. You’re probably what, eight, nine years old at that time.

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. Yeah. My dad was the best best dad ever. Um he was so supportive uh especially of like my dance career. Um he was at every dance recital, every dance competition, which there was many pretty much every weekend. Um and yeah, he was just a great supportive dad.

David Raubach: Yeah. What was uh what was his personality like?

Caitlin Tharp: He was to me he was really goofy. Like we had a really fun banter and like I saw the soft side of my dad. Um I think other people would say like he was super hardworking. He was a pillar in the community. He um was always volunteering whether it be with the church or like the Rotary Club. He was very involved in the community.

David Raubach: What uh and what did he do for work?

Caitlin Tharp: So he actually managed Walmarts. He was with Walmarts for I don’t even know how long, like over 30 years. Um, so he had a really long good career with Walmart.

David Raubach: So you showed me a picture, speaking of dance, you showed me a picture of you and your dad at a fatherdaughter dance. Yes. I just had a fatherdaughter dance experience on Friday. I I will say that my daughter didn’t do much dancing. She mostly ran off with her friends. So I ended up talking with the other dads for most of the fatherdaughter dance. But um what was that? I mean do you remember that specific father daughter dance?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah, those are some of like my earliest memories. And uh the reason like I told you like just to go and enjoy it even if she’s not with you 24/7 like I promise you she remembers those experiences and it means more to her than than you realize cuz those are some of my fondest memories with my dad.

David Raubach: Yeah. What how did your dad respond when you went off to college? Because you moved from Ada so you’re not in Ada anymore. I mean that’s a big I’m imagining that for myself multiple daughters and just what that’s going to be like emotionally.

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah, I think it was hard but we me and my dad always had the type of relationship where it wasn’t we didn’t communicate through a lot of words like we just got each other cuz we were so similar. Me and my mom, it was a lot harder on my mom, I think, than my dad. But, um, I know he like missed me, but they were also up all the time for OU events and OU games, so I got to see them a lot, too.

David Raubach: Cuz this uh you were the last kid leaving.

Caitlin Tharp: Yes. That was that was hard on them for sure. But they would make time to come to Norman often. And ADA is only like an hour and a half. So, I’d go home too sometimes on the weekends.

David Raubach: So, he would come to the football games while you were doing…

Caitlin Tharp: Yes. Yes. And they it was awesome because they had season tickets like right in front of where we cheered the first and fourth quarter. So I always got to see them at the games too.

David Raubach: What’s something that you learned about life from your dad? What’s some life advice that you remember him giving to you that you think I want to pass that down to my kids?

Caitlin Tharp: Um I think hard work was something that he instilled in all of us. Um just the importance of working hard for your family, working hard in your community, um and just being selfless, doing things for others. Um and at the end of the day, like that’s the most important thing is to work hard and be there for your family and be there for others and love others um as Jesus would.

David Raubach: Yeah, that’s that’s great advice. That’s good advice for anybody. What? Um, so there was a point, obviously we mentioned this in the intro, where your dad does get diagnosed with a brain tumor. Do you remember that 24-hour period?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. So, I was actually um at an event for our Sunday school class. Um, they were having like a ladies night and I remember I kept getting phone calls and there was like a speaker there so I wasn’t I was not on my phone but I kept my phone kept going off and so I looked and it was my brother. He had called me like three times. I was like that’s weird like it must be something urgent. So I got up and I called him back and he was like hey um you need to go home.

Caitlin Tharp: Um sorry. And we had found out that my dad had a tumor and that they were going to put him in an ambulance from Ada Mercy to Mercy up here.

Caitlin Tharp: And um I was just like frozen like I didn’t know what to do. And um my husband luckily had been in contact with my brother too. And so he had called our Sunday school teacher’s um husband and he like met me at the door and he just knew like that I was going to be frightened and like just like I said I was just frozen. I didn’t know what to do. And so he walked me out to the car and Camden came and took me and then we went straight to the hospital cuz it was completely unexpected.

David Raubach: Yeah. What how did how did the diagnosis even happen? Was there some type of symptom or do you know?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. So, my dad had been experiencing um what we thought was like he maybe had a mild stroke. So, he was um having like numbness in one side. I think it was his left side. And um he kept dropping things. And then um we started to notice it in his face. And so they took him in for um a scan, a CT scan, because they thought he had had a stroke. Um and when they did that, they saw the tumor.

David Raubach: Okay. So he gets transferred from Ada up to Oklahoma City. Yeah. What I mean, I know this is it was probably a whirlwind and a lot was happening and there’s a lot of information. Do you remember the next few days what you were hearing or what you understood about what was happening?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. So I remember they took him into surgery. I think it was that next morning um because we had found out that night. They prepped him the next day or the next morning he had surgery and I remember like I was able to see him that day and he was in good spirits. Um he was just goofing around in the hospital room but obviously like we were all just like really scared and didn’t know like what to expect from there. Um, and then there was a series of just meeting with doctors and getting the diagnosis that he had glyobblast.

David Raubach: What What did you understand about that diagnosis of a glyopblastto at that point?

Caitlin Tharp: Yes. I never heard of it. Um, but the doctors basically told us not to Google it. Um, so I didn’t I knew at that point when they said that that it was bad. Um, but I tried to just for my dad like stay hopeful and not not research it because I wanted to be positive for him.

David Raubach: Yeah. What um what was your you said that your dad he has kind of this goofy personality and even after the surgery he was you described him as goofing off a little bit. Yeah. What what was he doing kind of those first few days?

Caitlin Tharp: Oh my gosh. He is like the worst patient ever. He’s like just wanted to get out of bed and like he was like cleaning up the room cuz my dad was an eat freak. He was like so he was like he couldn’t stand there being like papers or anything else. So he was like cleaning up the room and they were like you need to stay in bed. You just had brain surgery like this morning. Um but he was already like just acting his normal self. So that gave me hope too. I was like okay maybe he is going to be okay. Um, so through that, I mean, watching him be himself like helped me be hopeful and I knew it was going to be a journey. So, I just tried to be as positive as I could.

David Raubach: Yeah. What um what what were you trying to do yourself or what what did you feel like your involvement or role needed to be at that point as a daughter?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. Um, I think I knew my strong suit wasn’t going to be understanding like the medical side of it. And so I I just knew that I could be there um as encouragement, whether that be going to the appointments um just being there as much as I could. Um, and you know, like I had mentioned earlier, I mean, my dad didn’t exchange a lot of words. Like we just communicated through it’s even hard to like put into words, but I knew like for me just being there meant a lot.

David Raubach: Yeah. So, you were trying to be present up at the hospital.

Caitlin Tharp: Yes. Yeah. And I did. I took time off work. I was there as often as I could be.

David Raubach: Yeah. What So, he has the surgery, what were the next steps from a treatment standpoint after that?

Caitlin Tharp: So, um he immediately started chemotherapy. They um had him on the pill form of chemo. So, he did that. Um there was talks about getting him to MD Anderson, but um unfortunately he declined too fast and wasn’t able to get on a plane and and do that. So, um, they did as much treatment as they could in state.

David Raubach: Okay. So, he’s, um, he’s he’s doing chemo, he does the surgery. Was there a a point in time where it seemed like maybe things did shift. I mean, you talked about him not physically being able to get to MD Anderson. Yeah. I guess was there was a point where…

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. So he did treatment um up up in the city for a while. Um once it got pretty bad and he was on the decline, he switched his treatments to Ada um and Mercy and Ada and um it was just too hard for him to travel. Um and then it got to the point of hospice where he just stopped dreaming.

David Raubach: Walk us through that emotional journey as the best that you can. Just what kind of that I know it was overwhelming, a roller coaster. There probably were days that were worse than others.

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. Um so it was 6 months from diagnosis till he died. Um, in a lot of ways it was um it was a blessing that happened that fast, but it was also really hard um because it happened so fast. Um, but watching your parent, your dad, especially somebody that is like superhero in your eyes, like decline in a way that you just feel helpless. Um, it’s really really hard.

David Raubach: Yeah. What um talk about just how you and the family came together through this period.

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. Um so once he changed his treatments to to be an ADA and I saw that things were rapidly declining, I went home as much as I could. Um, I think one thing to understand when anyone in your family is going through something like this is everyone grieves differently.

Caitlin Tharp: Um, so that was hard because um, my oldest brother was living at home. He had moved home from Austin um, to take care of the business. My parents had a business at that point. My dad had retired from Walmart and they owned a business there. And so my brother had moved once my dad got his diagnosis and was helping with the business. So he wasn’t around a lot, but he was working a lot.

Caitlin Tharp: So I was just trying to be there as much as I could for my mom. Um and just spend time with my dad. Um and then I learned through that that like my other brother’s version of grieving was different. Like he didn’t want to see my dad like that, which I understand now, but in the time it was really hard.

David Raubach: Yeah. What are some things? So, um, your dad passes away and there’s that point after that happens where I think part of the therapy is just memories and sharing memories. Yeah. What are some things that you guys talked about or maybe things that even that you learned about your dad that you didn’t even know from friends or other relatives?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. Um so in the first couple of days like after he passed we were preparing for the funeral. So we were getting all kinds of pictures gathered together and that was just a sweet time like with family. My um dad’s brothers were came into town and cousins and we were all I remember we were just like all in my parents’ garage just like drinking beer, listening to music and like looking at old family photos and um so that was a really like sweet memory just spending time with family and reflecting on what an awesome guy my dad was and um just how special he was to so many people.

Caitlin Tharp: Um, and then like in the coming months and years, I feel like people have been really good and sweet to reach out and tell me like, “Oh, your dad like meant so much to me. He was such a mentor to me or um, I never told you this, but your dad, you know, always like bragged about you on Palm or whatever it was.” Like um that’s meant a lot to me over the years when people reach out and tell me memories or things about my dad.

David Raubach: Yeah. What what’s something when you describe your dad to your kids or I know they’re they’re young now. They’re not necessarily going to process all of that, but as they get a little bit older, you’ll share stories about your dad. Yeah. What’s something that you know for sure you’re going to tell your son or your daughter about your dad?

Caitlin Tharp: Just how wild he would have been about them. Like he would have been the best grandpa. Um he loved kids and he loved his kids especially. So I just know he would have been the best grandpa. Um but I’ll also like share with them like the things that remind me of him that they do. Cuz I think like that God is so sweet in that way to like send me reminders of my dad through my kids. Um so just make sure they know that.

David Raubach: Yeah. How and and I asked this question a little bit from the perspective maybe of somebody who’s at the point in a journey with a relative or a loved one that you were at a few years ago. Yeah. Describe the the healing process after your dad passed away. What what was that like? How did you navigate just the ups and downs of that journey?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah. Um, it’s definitely a process and takes a lot of time. Um, I would say a lot of therapy helped me, um, just process things that, you know, it happened so quickly and, um, just taking the time to process it after the fact. Um, and also my faith. Like I’m so thankful that my parents instilled that in me at such a young age to have that foundation. Um, to know that I will see my dad again.

Caitlin Tharp: I think that’s what keeps me going is knowing that he’s in heaven and that um, this isn’t our home and that, you know, he’s in a way better place. And I think I someone asked me at one point like if you could ask your dad if he would come back to earth.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Caitlin Tharp: Would he say yes? I’m like no, he wouldn’t. Like I know he wouldn’t. And so I know he’s free from the suffering that I saw. And so as selfishly as I want him here and I want him experiencing the things with my kids, I know that he is in a much better place. And I can only hope to be there with him one day.

David Raubach: Yeah. Have you had the opportunity to talk to other people that are going through a similar journey?

Caitlin Tharp: Yeah, unfortunately I’ve had two close friends that have both of their dads have gotten the same diagnosis as my dad. Um, one her dad just passed away this past year and then one he’s currently going through treatment right now. So, I I truly like think I’ll never fully understand why my dad had to go through this and why our family did, I know that it’s just part of my testimony to share and hopefully help others as they struggle through it because I know that there is a purpose for it. And so, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to figure that out. But if even if I can help anyone with it, whether that’s give them comfort or share my experience, I’m happy to do that.

David Raubach: Yeah. What what’s what are some words that you found encouraging as you were going through it that maybe somebody said to you that you’ve kind of taken and if somebody’s watching this today that you would say to them?

Caitlin Tharp: I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily any like words. I think it’s just people being there. Um, that’s the biggest thing I can say is just show up. Show up for the people that you love. And if you don’t know the right thing to say, that’s okay. You don’t have to say anything because odds are they’re not going to remember what you say anyways. But they will remember if you’re there.

David Raubach: If you’re there. Yeah.

Caitlin Tharp: Even just a little text message or… Um, that’s like one of my friends that, you know, her dad just recently passed away from glyobblastoma. Um, I shared a book with her that helped me and um, she lives in Atlanta and so it’s like I I mailed the book to her through Amazon. It’s like so easy. It took me 10 minutes but it probably meant a lot to her.

David Raubach: Absolutely. Yeah. If you can’t be there physically. Well, Kaitlin, I want to just say you’re so brave for coming on. Thank you. And sharing this story and I’m I cannot believe that I got through that without crying. And I I really appreciate just your transparency and your willingness to pour out your emotions talking about your dad. And I know that you’ve been, as you mentioned, an encouragement to some other people that are going through something like this, seeing a relative go through, especially a really tough diagnosis like glyopblasto. And I know that your words today are going to be so encouraging for people that are listening to this. So, thank you so much.

Caitlin Tharp: Of course. Thank you.

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