Welcome Guest
Join here
Members Log-In
Privacy Policy

Monday May 12,2008

A life that was too short

by Cassie

My name is Cassie and I'm going to tell you the story of my father. My dad was an alcoholic as far back as I can remember, but he never hit my mother or us, he was always happy. My parents did not have much money, so they did not have life insurance on themselves. My father had not been looking too good from 1998 on, and I asked him a few times dad go to the hospital, he would just tell me no Cass there is no money to go to the hospital. So he did not go.

In May of 2000 my dads skin turned yellow, he knew something was really wrong. We took my father to the hospital, and by my father being an alcoholic, the doctors just assumed it was problems with his liver. My dad stayed in for 3 day to try to clean himself up. When he came home, doctors had him on medications to clear up the jaundice. Five weeks went on and he was still jaundice, and he was losing 3-5 pounds a week.

Doctors were concerned that it may be cancer, they did testing but couldn't find any signs. What they did find after some more tests is there was blockage at the head of the pancreas. They thought it was scarred up tissue from being an alcohlic, so set up a date to do the surgery. Doctors came out of surgury and told us it was pancreatic cancer, if he responded to the treatment, he had maybe a year, if not 3-6 months. My dad went through chemo, and radiation, and his tumor did shrink so they tried to go back in and remove it but they couldn't even get near the tumor because of all the damage from drinking and from the first surgery, this was 12-00, the 1st surgury was 7-00.

My dad was in a whole lot of pain, he was suffering bad. He continued to lose more and more weight. My dad was still talking to us 2 hours before he passed. The nurse at hospice told us it was time at 1:30 a.m. and we sat with him, he was gasping for air, moving his head side to side, after 10 mins. he started to say mom mom mom mom mom he wanted my grandma, she had just walked in and I think he needed to hear his own mother tell him it was o.k. to let go. This went on for another 1/2 hour, all you could hear is this fluid swishing around in his lungs, it was so scary, his eyes were wide open, also his mouth.