I think my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2001 after suffering through numerous misdiagnoses. The doctors thought his severe stomach pains were a result of lactose intolerance and then Crohn's disease, ignoring the fact that my dad's mother had passed away from colon cancer. They diagnosed his colon cancer when they conducted a surgery to remove part of his colon, thinking it was Crohn's disease. "We've never seen anything like it," the surgeon told my mother and father. "The colon cancer was mimicking Crohn's disease." My dad underwent chemo and radiation sessions and more surgeries to remove more of his intestines in the hope of winning the battle against the cancer. And then one day they thought they'd gotten it all. His chemo and radiation continued as more of a preventative than reactive measure. They did a PET scan, which I was told would determine if there was any cancer left. The test came back with no traces of cancer.
But he started feeling bad again in September 2002. He underwent another surgery to exam his intestines and low and behold, not only had the cancer come back, it had come back with a vengeance. In fact, they gave him anywhere from "one week to one year" left to live. It threw my family's whole world into a tailspin. I began coming come to Visalia (three hours from my home in Los Angeles) nearly every weekend. I moved in with Brent and his family and applied the money I was using for rent to help my parents fix up their house, something my dad had wanted to do but was derailed because of his illness. When my dad was in the hospital off and on for the next year, Brent and I, along with my mom when possible, picked out new linoleum and carpet and painted all the rooms. I, of course, also spent many hours with my dad in and out of the hospital. At one point there was an incident where my dad was suffering from stomach pain, this time caused by a rubber tube that the surgeon had left inside him!
On Friday, September 12, 2003, my team of co-workers and I had given a presentation to our client. Upon returning to the office around 4 p.m., my boss told my teammates and I could go ahead and leave early because of all our hard work on the presentation. I was all packed and ready to go to Visalia to visit my family for the weekend, so I hopped in the car and started the three-hour trip directly from the office, thankful that I had a chance to beat the increasingly hectic Friday night traffic. I arrived home to find a strange warning on my parents' door, warning smokers that there was oxygen in use in the home. I walked in and found my dad, hooked up to oxygen and gasping for air, my mom on the phone, trying to get a hold of the doctor. I told my mom, "Dad looks really bad!" She knew he wasn't doing well and that's why she was on the phone with the doctor, but spending so much time with him, she was unable to really gauge how bad he was doing. I gave my dad a hug, he hugged me back and I told him that I loved him. My mom joined us in the living room, and all of a sudden my dad stopped breathing. His eyes stared straight ahead, open, but he wasn't breathing. He just stopped. My mom started screaming, I grabbed the phone and called 911. The operator tried to walk me through CPR, but at this point, it was too late. He was gone. No more suffering. His decline was over - from the vibrant father and husband to a shell of himself who couldn't eat (he spent more than a year fed intravenously), had lost more than 100 pounds (he went from resembling John Goodman to, well, smaller than me), and didn't know what day (or year) it was. That day will always remain in my head, every detail, including what my mother wore, the fact that if I hadn't been allowed to leave early that day that I wouldn't have been there and only my mom would be there (I had only been home for 15 minutes before he passed away), and how I couldn't eat for days.
Cancer is a shitty, shitty disease. It took my father way too soon. He was only 49.
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