Terminal

In 1967, my dad, at the age of fifteen, almost died. He was diagnosed with diabetes and had to start taking insulin. For almost 40 years, he had relatively few complications from the disease.

In 1994, my dad's kidneys failed and he was placed on dialysis.

In 1996, he had a kidney and pancreas transplant. In the twelve years since that transplant, he has had no complications related to this procedure.

From 1996-2006, he was in and out of the hospital and sick off and on with various illnesses. Most of them were made worse by the fact that his immune system was suppressed from the anti-rejection medication required due to the transplant.

In 2006, we were blown away when he was diagnosed with relatively late stage esophageal cancer. The cancer was actually caught rather early, but it had grown fast since he didn't have an immune system to slow the growth. He had a portion of his esophagus removed. He has had numerous complications from this surgery including, but not limited to, the inability to swallow.

In 2007, he was diagnosed with cancer in his mouth. He had been in pain for months and had numerous CT scans which never showed cancer. But, it was back. There was a mass on his jaw bone, so they removed almost half of his lower jaw and pulled up part of his chest muscle to "replace" the part of the jaw that was removed. He went through chemo and radiation this time.

Today, he was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. It is in his arms, legs, hips, and just about everywhere else. They also believe it is in his liver and possibly other organs, but it doesn't really matter because they can't treat it. Hospice has been called in.

It's crazy. He has been fighting and evading death for over 12 years., well really longer I guess. For the past two or three years, I have been preparing myself for this phone call - or so I thought. Nope, not prepared. Not shocked, but not prepared. I am already grieving like he is gone, but I just talked to him on the phone. He sounds good. He knows this is going to kill him, but he sounds okay.

For now, we anticipate only a few more weeks, or maybe months, for him to live. My hope for him is that he continues to enjoy a good quality of life for however long he can and then he just slips away quietly in his sleep. No pain, no anticipation.