So much has happened

On Wednesday 16 September my father was taken to the hospital because of dizziness and disorientation. It turned out he had been bleeding internally since about November and had lost a lot of blood. I have never seen someone so white before. He had also had a heart attack due to the stress his body was under by the lack of blood. Through the many tests that were done, he was found to have pancreatic cancer. On Monday he had surgery to remove his spleen (the cause of the bleeding) and also to remove the part of his pancreas that was cancerous. He spent a little over a week at the hospital. He came home Saturday evening and is doing really well. He's officially stage 2 and the doctors are optimistic that they have removed all the cancerous cells, basically rendering him cured. He's now a diabetic because of the reduced size of his pancreas.

During his time at the hospital, I didn't spend much time visiting with him. I don't feel guilty about it. Everyone keeps telling me that they understand why I did it. But the way they say it, makes me think they feel I should feel guilty. I understand my father was dying and could have died at any time. But I feel I was better able to be supportive of my mother through this by "removing" myself from the whole thing. What struck me the most through my limited visitation with my father was how small he looked lying there in the bed. My father is not a small man. Yes he had lost a lot of weight over the last year, but he always leaves the impression that he's a larger man than he is. In those first few days at the hospital he looked so small.

We knew he was feeling better after the surgery when he started asking about the guinea pig (his pet) and the state of the yard (his chore). He also spent a lot of time watching the History Channel. I have a feeling sometime soon, we may end up having to get cable just for the History Channel...

Image by Marjolein K. via her flickr.com account.