Dedicated to my Father

A person facing their own mortality must be going through an awful ordeal. Pondering over life-altering decisions, papers to read and sign, and the after-shock along with grieving. But we all know about the quality of life issues as well. With a stage four liver cancer diagnosis, was it truly worth saving someone’s life? Probably not, but perhaps prevention of cancer spreading could have happened. Perhaps valuing someone at the end stages of their life would have been nice as well as appropriate from their medical community. Is it worth it to save a senior citizen, someone who already lived most of their life, had a childhood, had a family, served in the Korean War, and now they are in their golden years. Golden years, so they say, a time of happiness and freedom. This is a story which is dedicated to my father and other senior citizens that were passed over by our health care system in the US.

Two years before his passing my father felt a pain in his stomach area. He went to see his doctor then, a specialist in Florida who told him it was only a shadow and there is nothing to worry about. Another year passed and my father had pains off and on in his stomach area. Again he had some tests done and was told it was only a shadow, nothing to worry about.

I remember the evening when I received that phone call from Florida; my mother was hysterical on the phone. She told me my father passed out on the floor and they had to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital. The doctors ran some tests and they think it may be cancer. I thought to myself there is no way he has cancer, they would have known this awhile back. It was decided that I would fly down to Florida from Pennsylvania to obtain some answers.

After many other tests were run the final result was liver cancer, which had originated in the stomach and then spread to the liver and pancreas. The shadow that they spotted a few years ago was the start of it all, which was now classified as a cancerous tumor. My father had a few weeks left to live and we were told any type of treatment would do more harm than good. After all he is 71 years old and he does not have much life left anyway. He is a senior citizen so it is not worth giving him treatment to save him, he may suffer more from the actual treatment then the disease itself. It is best to let him go peacefully. This is what we were told by his Oncologist. My brother and I along with my mother decided no treatment as we did not want him to suffer. My father, who was alert at the time wanted treatment, he wanted to live. It was a horrible ordeal, watching a tough guy cry while signing the do not resuscitate papers in the hospital.

I basically moved to florida with another family member for a month or longer, leaving my daughter and my husband behind in order to take care of my mother who was older than my father. Driving her back and forth to the hospital and then eventually to the hospice facility. Our visits to the hospital before hospice care were frequent, at least twice a day. My father’s Oncologist was sitting in the room with us while my father was sleeping and asked my mother and I if we arranged his funeral yet. Did we pick out the coffin, did we call the funeral home yet, and did we alert all the family members. This was very infuriating as a doctor should know the last sense to leave a patient is their hearing. Knowing this my heart was just crushed, what a horrible thing to discuss in front of a dying patient.

All the while my father and my family could not believe this disease was not diagnosed sooner, as it was classified as a shadow, my father was upset and also very furious. He would yell at the nurses, knock his table over with his food on it, and curse everyone out that crossed his path. After a week his health started to go downhill. A family member of mine who had cancer previously, contacted her Oncologist in Philadelphia and stated they had a better treatment plan for my father and it would extend his life. My father was not able to fly due to blood loss, so we looked over the treatment plan and started mapping out our car trip with my father so he could obtain this treatment. We had to fax his records over to the hospital in Philadelphia, and I had to get my fathers signature in order to transfer his records, so I went into his room and had him sign papers while he was on heavy morphine. We never told my mother, we wanted to wait so she would not get her hopes up about the treatment options in Philadelphia. We started to get organized and put our plans in motion but unfortunately my father passed away before our trip.

After flying my fathers body back to Philadelphia and arranging and attending the funeral my 80 year old mother came to live with me and my family. My life has never been the same and never will be. Now I am proud to say I am part of the sandwich generation, which is not fully accepted in the US. Let’s shove our senior citizens in nursing homes, so we can go on and live our happy lives without being burdened. So how uncaring and selfish can we be to our extended family? The people that raised us, why do we push them aside in their elder years?

After this whole incident my brother came over to our new house in Warminster, PA. He took his digital camera out of the bag and showed a shocking photo. He had no idea how that perfectly centered photo magically got on to his digital camera. It was a photo of my father in bed in the hospice facility sleeping peacefully. Behind him was a white board that was written on daily by his nurse. We down-loaded the photo in order to see if we could read the words that were written on the white board. My husband, my brother and I could not make out those words on that white board. Still today we have no idea how that photo got onto that digital camera. My brother swore he never took that digital photo while visiting my father in the hospice facility. We know my father passed away angry, so we assume that photo is a sign he sent to us. We knew in general he had a temper, but we certainly know why he passed away angry.

It still lingers even though it was a few years ago. Grief has various steps, one of them is anger. We don’t think his anger was from his grieving; it was probably due to the way he was treated towards the end of his life, and also his lack of treatment options.