While checking on the dog at my parents’ house, I received an urgent call from my mother to return to the hospital.

Without going into the grim details, the emergency room doctor reviewed with me a two page list of everything that was failing or otherwise wrong in my father’s body. The doctor was very compassionate while still being straightforward, telling me that my father was the most ill person he had seen in a very long time, and that there was a strong possibility that he would not last the night.

To say that the oncologist we visited on Thursday was a bit too cavalier with the maladies that we described my father suffering in the days before the visit is putting it more than mildly.

At 4:00AM, they finished stabilizing my Dad to the point where he could be moved to the Intensive Care Unit.

Now, I am back at my parents’ house, retrieving the medication that my mom must take, checking on the dog, and making a small breakfast for my mother. The first time we can visit my father in the ICU is at 9:00AM.

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I have just returned from the emergency room, where my father is now, receiving saline and blood to increase his blood pressure. We called an ambulance after he passed out twice this evening.

I don’t know if he will ever get strong enough to receive the chemotherapy, but he did say “yes” when asked if he wanted to be resuscitated if his heart stopped or put on a respirator if he stopped breathing, so he hasn’t given up hope.

Short of a miracle, I don’t see much hope beyond a few months, and those spent in pain. Whatever he decides, though, I’m behind him 100%, regardless of what anyone else wants. It is his life, and I will defend at all costs his right to decide how it ends.

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