Hi Lynn,
I just wanted to let you know that you are NOT alone!!
We were stationed in England in the Airforce in 1997 and got a call from my sister-in-law that my mother-in-law was not doing too good (she battled kidney, colon, and stomach cancer for 3 years) and we needed to get home, this was in December right before Christmas. We did not plan on going home for Christmas that year, but under the circumstances we had to. She was very sick looking and depressed the whole time we were there.
We spent Christmas with her and while we were home my Grandfather dies suddenly from a Pulmonary embolism.
2 months later we got another call telling us to get home as fast as we could that she was in the hospital on a respirator. We got home and she was not even coherient, we had to make the decision to continue the morphine and that it would cause her to stop breathing. We had to let her go.
10 months later my Mother called me and told me she had lung cancer. We were still in England and my husband was deployed to Saudi because of the peace keeping there at the time. I lost it. I had been there when my husbands mother died and now 10 months later I am facing my mother having cancer. The hardest part was not being able to be there with her.
She had bought me and my kids plane tickets before she found out she had the cancer so we could come home for a while since my husband was deployed. I BEGGED her to change the tickets so I could come home to be with her and she told me she did not want my kids to see her going through chemo. She said for me just to come as planned becasue she would be over the chemo when we got there and we could spend quality time together. I joked and told her I would take her to the mall and push her in a wheelchair if I had to. She was a shopaholic.
Well, the day before we were suppose to get on the plane to go home my sister called and told me she was in the hospital on a respirator and it did not look good. In England by myself with my kids (they were 7yrs and 4 yrs at the time) I was a basket case!!! I wanted to be there with her soooo bad it hurt. I had a friend pick us up at the airport and take me straight to the hospital and asked her to keep my kids for a few days.
She was in the ICU and not coherient because she had been sedated. I stayed there for about an hour and then went home with my family to get some rest so I could go back the next day to be with her. It was about 10pm when we left the hospital. We got home and 30 minutes later we got a call from the Dr saying her BP was dropping fast. She died before we got to the hospital.
I will always have to live with the fact that I NEVER got to say goodbye to her. She was my bestfriend and my rock and she was gone 3 weeks after being diagnosed.
I know how hard it must be for you to have gone through what you have and now seeing your dad like this. Just thank god you can be there for him, even though he is not doing well at least you will know you were there for him through all of his pain.
My prayers are with you and your family and I am so sorry you have to go through this. Be strong and tell him how much you love him EVERYDAY!!!
HUG, Pam