Life is full of moments that change your life forever. My dad died on January 17, 2013, just three weeks after his first visit to the hospital. He should have gone sooner. We all knew it, but he was stubborn and secretive about his health and didn't like to go to doctors. We think he knew (in his heart) that he had cancer and we think he knew his time was limited. He watched his father die of cancer of the esophagus in 1976 after going through radiation therapy, an eleven hour surgery, and a lot of pain. He didn't want to go through what he had seen his father go through. And apparently, he didn't want to share any of his thoughts or instincts in regards to his health with anyone close to him (that we are aware of). So he went through quite a long time losing weight and dealing with a great amount of pain.
I knew through my step mom Kathy that something was up, but he wouldn't share with her either and as I mentioned above, he was very secretive about the whole subject. So had Kathy known anything, she would have been sworn to secrecy anyway. I never understood the big secret thing, but that was a part of who he was. Perhaps some of it was to protect us but I think more than that, he had already decided not to go the doctor, and wouldn't have wanted to bug us.
I called him in October 2012 and asked him how he was doing. I was fishing for information and hoping for an opening to encourage him to visit a doctor. I mentioned I had noticed some weight loss and that he hadn't quite seemed "himself" during our visit in August. He didn't share much and turned down my invitation to come for a visit and to have lunch at the local restaurant we both enjoyed. When I asked him why he didn't want to join me, he mentioned he was having an issue with eating. He said that a lot of times when attempting to eat, his food would come back up. He said it was as if the food items wouldn't go all the way down and the only way he could "fix" the issue was to go to the restroom and get it to come back up. For that reason, he thought he'd better not try lunch out at a restaurant. I gave him the suggestion of trying Prilosec in case it was a case of acid reflux. I explained that I knew many people dealing with Acid Reflux (aka "Gerds") and a few of them had it pretty major with issues like he was having. He said he might try some Prilosec to see if that helped. We ended the conversation with me encouraging him to let me know if things got better and he wanted to change his mind about lunch.
* To be continued *
