Tuesday, January 22, 2013

In Loving Memory of My Dad

Early Sunday morning, January 20, 2013, my dad quietly passed through the door to Heaven and into the arms of God. He passed away in his sleep.
It was very hard for us to have him leave us, but he is free of pain, free of his cancer, and in a new body in Heaven.
We have an inside family joke that we put in his obituary. When we were younger and living on the farm, we would help dad walk beans to get rid of weeds during the summer. Whenever it was time for lunch or at the end of the day, the five of us kids would start walking really fast through the rows that we were weeding. Dad would always tell us...."Don't be haulin' ass to the truck!" Well, Sunday morning, after my two sisters and a niece helped mom get everything packed up and home after dad passed, my sister Jennifer and I were outside. We gave each other a hug, and Jennifer whispered in my ear "Don't haul ass to the truck!" I told her that dad's already hauled ass to the truck. At the end of our dad's obituary we put, through popular vote...."He snuck off and hauled ass to the truck." A fitting family tribute to a great man we called our dad and will miss greatly. He's in Heaven, driving the big red tractor God had waiting for him and farming....without a GPS! His rows are probably straighter there than when he was here on earth and having to use a GPS. He hated the GPS!
LOVE YOU and MISS YOU POPSIE

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Life Sucks!

The end of the year was not good at all, and the beginning of this year is even worse. I apologize if this narrative seems rather jumpy.....but considering what my family and I are going through, I'm lucky to be writing this without being in tears.

My dad has had physical problems since May 2012, when he had a triple by-pass on his heart. He has not been the same at all. His health has been going down hill, and has gotten even worse since just before Christmas.

I have watched my dad go from being able to walk normally to not being able to walk in three weeks. On January 3rd, we took him, by ambulance, to the emergency room. There was no other way to get him to the ER because my next to youngest sister, my youngest son and I were NOT going to even attempt to carry dad down 4 steps to the drive way and into the van, then into a wheelchair at the hospital. There would have been 4 people hurt! And dad would have gotten hurt the worst! He didn't argue when I told him that I was going to call the ambulance so none of us got hurt.

The prognosis is not good. On his 81st birthday (January 4th) they confirmed that he has stage 4 metastasized cancer in his bones and spine.....cancer that never showed up on the MRI in May (2012) before he had his open heart surgery....but it is now in various bones.....right upper leg, hip, spine, ribs, and other places showed up on the January 3rd and 4th MRI's that they took. His blood work that they did in the emergency room was not good at all. He's been on Warfarin since before his surgery and the doctor wanted his blood thickness to be between 2 & 3. The higher the number....the thinner the blood....his was greater than 10!! His sodium was very low, his calcium was very high, and his potassium was out of whack too! They said that the cancer will royally mess things up with his blood and his brain. The high calcium they said will make him very tired and sleep a lot and will eventually mess with his memory. The cancer will do the same. They are giving him between 1 and 3 months to live. My sad thoughts were: Happy Birthday dad, your doctors have told you that you have stage 4 cancer and you have 1 to 3 months to live.

They did a biopsy on a spot on his rib that was bigger, and safer, than doing the biopsy on his spine. They sent the biopsy off to Mayo Clinic. Not sure if they couldn't figure out what the cancer is here, or whether they wanted a second opinion. Either way, my dad is in and out of consciousness. He is losing his lucid state more and more every day. The doctors have warned us that he will go through being awake and lucid, to sleeping a lot, to being agitated, to being belligerent, to not knowing who anyone is, to being in a coma and then death. I LOVE MY DAD! So please don't misunderstand me when I say this, but.....honestly, since he's not been on Warfarin and hasn't been moving around, I hope that he has a massive heart attack before he gets to the point of not knowing who anyone is. I don't want to see my parents suffer in any way, shape or form.

So far they are keeping him as pain free as possible. My dad's Spirit is getting ready to leave us little by little and there isn't a damned thing I or anyone else can do to make him better! The chemo and radiation won't do him any good....if anything....it will just prolong his suffering. He doesn't want that, mom doesn't want that, and neither do the five of their children, nine grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.

I WANT MY DAD BACK! I want him back the way he used to be....but....the Divine has a different agenda than what mine is. I can't fix this. I can't heal this. I can only Pray for him and my family. I know that dad is not going alone! His Angels have always been with him and are going to be with him to walk with him through the door to Heaven. None of us walk through this life alone. We are always in the presence of the Divine and our Divine Angels. I know that each of us has our own Divinely appointed Angels that help us and comfort us when we are going through any crisis. The Divine carries us when we are in real need of Divine help.

I hope that you will send Prayers to my dad and my family during this time. Even though I don't know you personally ...... I LOVE YOU ALL!!

<3 Trish