A lot of this year has been really rough on my dad. He’s had health problems off and on, he has Diabetes and high blood pressure…a stroke years ago left him blind in one eye.

But up til now he’s kept everything pretty well maintained through diet and medications,lots and lots of medications and my mom who’s been fantastic about keeping him healthy.

He got glaucoma in his remaining eye earlier this year and because the thought of being totally blind was unacceptable to him he elected to have an eye surgery which helped a lot. He was the happiest I had seen him in a long time and talking about possibly being able to drive again once he got the okay.

He never got he okay, however because he starting having other heath problems that came fast and without anyone knowing what was going on.

For a man who hates hospitals and just likes to spend time at home-this year has quite frankly sucked.

This is a picture of my father and mother the day before he was admitted to the hospital.

His last doctor visit was the day after my daughter’s birthday party and he was admitted to the hospital that same day, he hasn’t been home since.

He had so so many tests and none of them showed any cause for his symptoms…the last one was a bone marrow test and that one came back positive for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Because of his age, he’s eighty,because he is so weak,and because we’ve been advised that treatments as well as a second necessary bone marrow test would probably do more harm than good, our family has decided on my father not going through with chemotherapy. We discussed it with him and he was in agreement with this.

We thought he’d be able to go to a managed care facility where he undergo rehabilitation so that he might be able to get his legs strong again and walk before going back home.

That was a huge mistake because none of us realized how much he would be pushed during his physical therapy.  His blood pressure spiked at an alarming rate during a walking session and he is back in the hospital again.

If I could undo the decision to send him to the managed care facility I would. I wish now we had sent him home as I know this would have been something he would’ve appreciated more.

The decision was a hard one but given the choice between managed care where it seemed like he would walk again and go home a little more like himself and just going home with Hospice….well, the managed care seemed a more hopeful choice.

We had no idea how quickly he would get weaker so quickly. The bone marrow test had tested positive for only 4% cancer but we had already been told that were we to go through with another bone marrow test the results would almost certainly be much higher. There’s just been such a huge change in his condition from the time we made that decision. Last week we were able to talk with him and now it’s extremely hard to understand what he is saying. They’ve had to put a feeding tube in through his nose because he was having a lot of trouble swallowing.

This is very,very hard-it’s heart breaking and I’m just trying be as helpful as I can be. I’m trying to spend as much time with him while trying not to neglect my young children and husband.

We are very lucky to have a large family that can take turns helping, everyone is doing what they can. My mother has been spending the night at the hospital with him every night at her insistence but we’ve finally talked her into letting us do that instead.She has health problems of her own and we worry that all of this will be too much for her.My dad is not sleeping much anymore and because he wakes up startled and confused we are extremely afraid that he might try pulling out his feeding tube.

Prayers for our family and him would greatly be appreciated.

I don’t want him to suffer..but it’s very hard to imagine having to let go.