My Lovely Dad
My dad and love of my life (my husband is a close second) died of this fucking bastard of a cancer. Me, my husband, and him were the three musketeers. It all happened so fast that I think I am only now starting to process it. I've been lurking here since February but decided to post. He was diagnosed in February 7. Looking back there were breadcrumbs but nothing to point to anything being wrong with him until late January. It was forecast to snow a lot in PA and I called him to see if he needed anything from the grocery store. He sounded confused and said he was on the floor and didn't know how he got there. And I FUCKING didn't go to him. I thought he must have been drinking too much but looking back this doesn't make sense and I am angry at myself thinking how alone and scared he must have been, My favorite person. He came to my house a week later and said he was scared that he was forgetting things - and I lectured him to drink less and get a hearing aid - to take better care of himself. But then he started saying such weird things (because of the aphasia) and then I thought to when he was on the floor. I told him that I thought he had a stroke that week and we needed to go to the ER, but he refused. So I take him to dinner the next week to see how he seems. And he is quieter. My husband thought he was shuffling when we walked. So I thought - he's getting older (he was only 73), was worried about dementia, strokes. Worried but did not want to look at it head on. Looked at it from my peripheral vision to keep the fear at arms length. A week later my cousin in FL called and told me to get to his house because he sounded weird. My cousin said he thought he had a stroke. What I would not give if it were just a stroke. He gets diagnosed and I knew what it was. I cried and asked the doctor how long - 12-15 months. The next day they do the biopsy - the cannot debulk any of this bastard. It is in 3 parts of his brain. There is midline shift. He has a fucking stroke during the biopsy. Paralyzed on his right side. Speech difficulty. I ask the neurosurgeon - how much time does he have really now that you have seen this thing - he says 5 months with aggressive treatment and 1-2 months with no treatment. His autonomy. His life. The smartest person I know - reads all the time, plays chess, memorizes poems, historical dates, etc. He can't even communicate to us what he is going through. Can't read, hard to watch TV, no distractions just stuck in his head this awful thing happening to him. Stuck in a bed. The best man I have ever known. We bring him home to our house after he is in the hospital for 2 weeks. He is bedbound. We maintain he gets to decide if he wants treatment as long he he is able to make the choice. It takes 7 weeks for the biopsy (1-2 months without, 1-2 months without). Radiation doctor wants to do 5 rounds of palliative radiation. Chemo doctor says too much risk for little benefit. My dad wants to do radiation. We do not want him to. He is on high dose dex. His brain has nowhere to swell from radiation except his brainstem. This will accelerate the inevitable and I want him with me as long as possible. We arrange medical transport for him to go the treatments. We put him on hospice at home the day the treatments end. He dies 5 days later. The death rattle was not just hard for us - my dad looked fucking scared. Sounded like he was drowning. I sat with him until the hospice people came to double and then triple his morphine. My hand on his heart, my other hand on his arm saying as soothing and calm as I could when he would wake up and start coughing and choking - it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, i love you, it's okay - and breathing in and out real deep and slow to mimic the sound of being able to actually breathe. He calms down and my husbands says go to bed, I will do the morphine every hour, you did what you needed to do. AND I GO TO BED. What is wrong with me? Why didn't I hold his hand through all of it. My beautiful, perfect loving dad. The saftest and most love I have ever known. He died on April 15. I cry every day. EVERY day. And I cried every day since his diagnosis. My chest feels tight, my fingers tingle, my heart is broken. I smell his hat, kiss his wallet, read his christmas card to me over and over again where he tells us to be happy in our new home (we moved in Nov), be happy beyond counting, and that he loves us all always. I don't think I will recover from his loss. And I am sorry beyond words for anyone how has lost someone to this unrelenting monster for for anyone going through this hell. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
Easiest and hardest thing I have ever written in my life