Chapter 7

CCAC nurses came to the house frequently to check in on him, test his blood, and take his temp.  A patient receiving chemo is at a dangerous risk of developing fever.  In the event that his fever spiked we were told to take him to emerg immediately.  All these directions, and orders, schedules, and medications, Nothing was simple anymore.  My mom had the most complicated job of all, trying to deal with dad.  We know this long battle has just begun.  His days were spent mostly sleeping, and relaxing in his lazy boy chair.  When he felt up to it he did take small walks around the house as to keep his strength up.  He became very quiet, and did not want company.  The fact that someone like him was not up for visitors showed us just how much he was really suffering inside.  He never showed us, or expressed to us what he was feeling, even though we could see it, and watch him change in front of us, he always did his best to try and keep us positive.  Even in times like this, he worried not about himself.  We noticed that dad became very itchy, we assumed it was the radiation drying his skin out,  but  at one point the itching became so bad, that a trip to the ER in the middle of the night was made.  The doctors discovered he had hives.  He was literally scratching his skin off, and had to be put on an antihistamine to relieve it.  He likely had an allergic reaction to one of the many drugs he was on.  He went days without eating a thing, and only living off meal replacement shakes when he could keep them down.  Watching this happen was ripping me up inside.  How could this disease do such damage to a person.  The doctors had told us what to expect, but nothing they said could have prepared us for what we were seeing.  In the matter of 6 weeks my dad had lost 30 lbs and was slowly fading away to nothing but skin and bones.  When I went to see him, he was always sitting in his chair covered in blankets because he was always cold.  He was so frail, this wasn’t my dad anymore.  This was the disease taking him over, and it became more and more difficult to watch. 

As September came, Max and Samantha were set to start Junior Kindergarten.  It was to be such an exciting time in our lives, but it was only filled with sadness.  My dad would never have missed this.  I was starting to see change in Max, and I’m sure it was because of what he was seeing happen to his papa.  Charlee was too young to really understand what was happening, yet she never even paused before climbing up on papa’s lap when we visited.  She would cuddle up to him and tell him she loved him.  Max was very set back, and had to be persuaded that it was ok to even touch dad.  I could see the confusion in his little eyes and that was too much to bear. 

The next few weeks I seen my dad go through daily trips to London to receive radiation on the brain. After which he started his first round of chemo which lasted 3 days with 3 weeks off in between each round.  As though this wasn’t enough, they also started the radiation on his lung, this “simple” procedure, so he put it, would start to slowly burn the inside of his mouth and throat, it would dry his skin to the point where he couldn’t stand the itching, and kill his taste buds.  Not so simple anymore.  A task such as eating became a battle on its’ own.  He had lost any sensation to taste, therefore food did not appeal to him.  My mom tried her best to do what she could to get him to eat.  Even going so far as to order him meal replacement shakes, you would think this would be ok, something cool on his throat should have worked.  However it got to the point that he could not keep food down.  The sickness had set in.  All the awful things you hear about cancer patients going through treatment are true.  It`s so difficult to watch someone you love so much going through this and knowing there is nothing you can do to help.  All we could do was be there for him and show him we all were fighting this with him!! He was so tired from the treatments that to stand was a chore. 

One afternoon after a visit from a nurse left us again reeling with confusion.  Her attention was drawn to his weight loss.  He had lost 5 pounds in one week, and this was definetly not a good sign.  He was faced with a choice, to force himself to eat, or slowly fade away.  It was evident that he wanted to try, but his will to fight was fading just as quickly as his weight. 
He began to move less, and became weaker and weaker.  It was evident to us one afternoon after he collapsed while trying to walk to the washroom that we needed to make a decision.  We decided he needed to be sent back to the hospital.  Upon arriving in the ER we waited for him to be assessed, and this is when Dr. Realist entered our lives.  He became the one person in the medical field I could actually put trust into and I believed would not lie to me.   Dad’s blood pressure was dangerously low, I mean 60 on the high end and no reading on the low end.   They had trouble inserting an IV because of how bruised his arms were from all the previous poking. 

From this point on, we were told straight up that his chances for survival are not looking good.  After extensive blood work we discovered that his protein, sodium, and electrolyte counts were very low.  He was dehydrated and all around in bad shape.  To say he was dry as a bone is sugar coating it!  His liver enzymes counts and billy ruben were so high which were causing his skin to appear tanned and yellow.  His blood was so thin he was at a risk of internal bleeding.. So needless to say things were looking grim.  The bad news just seemed to keep coming, and my bad dream was very quickly becoming a sad reality.  He had to eat or face being put on a feeding tube.  The treatments required him to be at full strength and with his body so weak he would never make it through another chemo treatment.  This was a shock for dad to hear I’m sure, but it was at that point that he realized just how imperative it was that he eats! 

In the days to come dad was seen in London by one of his oncologists who was very concerned with his liver and decided that before dad’s next radiation treatment he wanted him to have a catscan of the liver so he could see what’s going on.   Needless to say that on dad’s next visit to London we found out that the results had never been sent to the doctor there.  This was why things were so frustrating for me! These are the problems we had along the way, with 4+ doctors involved in his case it was very hard to get straight answers from anyone.  Finally a week later the results were in but it was another rock for us to climb over.  The scan showed that the liver was clear but there was spots on the kidney that were in fact shrinking from the radiation and chemo he was receiving.  The visciousness of this disease was becoming more and more evident to us.  It was rearing it’s ugly head in yet another part of his already frail body.  It was like getting a high five and then a slap in the face all in the same split second.  No cancer in the liver… but! We are certain it’s now in the kidney.  How much can one person take?  Looking back now, we should have taken him home and enjoyed every last second we had with him.  If we had only known what the next few months would bring. 

The one part of this that still to this day confuses me is that they could not figure out what was happening with his liver.  His counts were so high, I’m talking 280 high, Normal is around 17, now you know what I mean.  Not one of his these highly trained experts could figure out what was wrong.  One doctor thought it could be the drain from the gall bladder not working properly and causing irritation to the liver.  Another couldn’t be convinced it wasn’t cancer infact spreading, and another simply figured his liver was shutting down due to the amount of cancer in his body.  What was it about this disease, it seemed that with everyday that passed it spread further and further. 

It was at this point that the doctors started talking about a more aggressive form of treatment, knowing now that the kidneys were affected, their original plan it seemed had to change.  My thoughts, his body isn't handling the treatments he is having now, how is he going to handle anything more aggressive.  At some point, we had to make the decision to scale back on treatments and just try to have some quality of life with him before the end.  A person can only take so much, and this difficult difficult decision was slowly coming upon us.  With doctors telling him he had just days to start fighting harder, eating and showing signs of improvement we knew that he had a decision to make.   With his entire family in his corner we all silently watched and waited.