Some of you may remember that my father developed stage IV cancer last spring. I posted at that time about it. The doctor had given him a life expectancy of one year at that time, in early June. At first they said it was liver cancer, then they discovered that his esophageal cancer had metastasized and invaded his liver.
In September, my father went to Europe for a last-hurrah trip through much of the places he loves and remembers: France, Italy, Greece. Then he came home with a renewed will to live.
He started chemo in November, against his oncologist's advice. Dad is a diabetic; he had kidney cancer two years ago and his left kidney was removed due to a renal tumor. Chemo could have collapsed the remaining kidney.
It didn't, but it may have opened him up to worse things. Jump with me.
Chemotherapy lowers the body's resistance to infection, due to the nature of the beast. It attacks pretty much everything and whatever's strongest survives. With Dad being a brittle diabetic, it was a long shot from the start that chemo would improve his situation.
Ten days ago or so (I'm not sure when, he had taken his chemo about four days before), he had to go to the hospital for intense pain in his leg. The chemo had robbed him of all his strength, so he couldn't make his own food, and so he wasn't eating. Even if he had been able to make his own food, he wouldn't have been able to eat. He was too nauseated.
It turns out that being non-mobile brought back a problem he had in his late thirties and early forties: bad circulation and blood clots. His right leg was apparently packed with the little buggers (they counted more than a dozen).
Because of his brittle condition, they couldn't do any kind of surgery to siphon out the clots. They put him on blood thinners and said "it'll take 6 to 8 weeks to drain this leg back out; we'll put you in rehab so you can learn to walk again." And, of course, they stopped the chemo.
And they told him that he had four to eight months to live. Possibly ten.
At the time, I thought that was the most horrible prediction I could have heard. I was wrong.
He's been at a nursing home/rehab place since the day after Christmas. He was able to come home for Christmas Day, but that was it. I saw his leg. It was swollen, but not horrible. But he was so tired.
He wasn't able to come to our church wedding on the 27th. He dictated something to my next brother, for the pastor to read. It was very special and I'm getting off the subject.
Dad's foot apparently ballooned while he was in the rehab center. The doctor saw him today and the nurses brought the foot to the doctor's attention. Dad says that when he saw it, the doctor's face "dropped like a rock." The foot is infected, and nothing is going to fix that problem according to the doctor. He said that even if Dad wasn't too frail for amputation, it wouldn't matter, because if they take the leg at the ankle, it'll be infected to the knee; if they take it at the knee, it'll be infected at the thigh, and so forth.
I've asked a nurse-practitioner friend about this, since the doctor didn't tell Dad what kind of an infection he has, but essentially my friend said this:
"There are all sorts of infections it could be, and it sounds like it's something that's probably systemic, so cutting off the foot wouldn't help. wherever the cut is the infection will reappear. Part of the problem with most chemo is that it lowers the body's resistance to infection. So bugs that might not normally cause infections can lead to problems, and there are a lot of bugs that live on our skins all the time. Add in the diabetic's poor circulation, and diabetics are prone to foot infections anyway. They can try antibiotics, but most of them are metabolized in the liver, and his liver isn't working well because of the cancer. Infection or sepsis (which is basically a systemic infection) or pneumonia are often the actual causes of death in cancer patients. The body is too weak to fight off something that would be no big deal to a healthy body."
In essence, this infection could be anything, but what it is doesn't matter specifically, since they can't treat it.
He's too frail to survive amputation. Unless the situation improves dramatically in the next week, the doctor has given him a month, at the outside, to live.
He was about to call me when I called him. When I asked about visiting and so forth, he told me in no uncertain terms: "You're going to be the first person with a doctorate in the family - you keep your nose to the grindstone! Besides, a lot of visits is going to just tire me out."
He wants me to carry on, as if everything is normal, as if he wasn't dying. But nothing's normal, and he is dying.
He asks for our prayers. I'm requesting them from all of you, too, please - prayers, healing energy, lit candles, good thoughts, whatever you can spare that is healing and positive, please send it his way.
Please. He needs a miracle.
So do I.
I don't want to live in a world without my father in it.
ETA: Wow, the Rec List? Thank you, folks. I'm really touched.