Updated Remembering My Dad - Love you!

Dad,

I love you.

I will miss you.

I will remember you.

I will honor you.

I will take care of Mom.

I am proud to be your daughter.

You are finally cancer free. Watch over me and my family. I will see you in time.

Love,

Boo

My brother sent out an update to those close to my dad. I have decided to post that here, since he explains it all. Thanks Dean, I couldn't do it.

Rob Update:

Hello everyone. Well, as most of you have already heard, my dad’s battle with cancer is finally over. He passed on Friday morning at 1am. He’s out of the hospital for good, and I’m 100% sure that he is ecstatic about that. Even knowing how hard this entire ordeal was on him. It was very difficult to tell him “go, you don’t have to fight it anymore, we’ll be ok.” As my mom’s last update mentioned, dad had been approved for a trial drug (chemo) and we were all very excited about that, because we were running out of options. So he started the drug and everything seemed to be going pretty well with the exception that this drug seemed to be harder on him than any of the others in the past. But he kept going and persevered. He started the drug on Friday and I went up to see him on Monday and he was doing pretty well. He was tired and sore, but in good spirits. On Wednesday, he started having trouble breathing and was extremely tired. Late Wednesday night, he seems to have taken a turn for the worst. Thursday morning mom got the call that we needed to come up to the hospital because dad was not doing well, so I picked mom up and we went up. When we got there you could immediately tell that something was wrong because his room seemed to have about 100 people in it, and they were all moving quickly. We got there at about 9am and the ICU doctor who was treating dad, was asking him questions like, “what year is it” “what city are you in” and “who is this man standing next to you(it was me)”. Dad was never able to really answer the questions about what year it was or what city it was, but he did get my name right although it took about a minute and a half (ok he called me Otis Thudpucker first but that doesn’t count). They treated dad in his room for the next three hours but he wasn’t improving so they decided to move him down to the M-ICU where he would have more folks looking after him. They moved him down at about 12:30 Thursday afternoon. They were going to sedate him and put a breathing tube in to see if they could help his breathing. Right before they did, he was able to talk to mom for a few minutes, and then he looked up to me, told me he loved me and then told me to “Take care of her”. I promised him I would and that I would see him later. We were then asked to leave the room and we were lead outside to the waiting room where we ended up sitting for the next six hours. During this time we got a few updates from the doc’s and those were mainly “we are doing everything we possibly can, but he is not responding very well”. Kelli and Denise arrived around 6 o’clock and we were finally able to go back and see him but not before the doc’s gave us all an update saying that basically he is minute to minute and really could pass at any time. We then headed into the room and I will be honest, seeing your dad in that state, with breathing tubes, dialysis, EKG’s, etc. etc. was probably one of the hardest things I’ve dealt with in my life. We had a pretty candid conversation with the doctors and the consensus was that even if the doc’s were able to pull dad out of this massive infection, that had caused this, he would be looking at probably 2 months of rehab before any new treatment could be done. Given how aggressive dad’s leukemia was, in two months his cancer would have been back, and given that we were pretty much out of options anyway, the bone marrow transplant (which was his only hope for a long term “cure”) would have had to have been put off anyway, never mind the fact that the bone marrow transplant is extremely traumatic in and of itself. There would be no way he could do it. My biggest fear was that he would somehow (thanks to the truly heroic actions of the M-ICU staff) pull through and open his eyes to see us all and he would continue to try and fight even though there really would have been no hope at that point. It would have been for us had we told the doc’s to resuscitate him so we told them not to. We all said our goodbyes, making sure that he knew we were ok which was likely the second hardest thing I’ve done. We stayed in the room most of the rest of the night until the doctors told us he was as stable as he could be and that we should get some rest. They promised to call us if something happened, so we all headed home.

After being home about an hour, and seconds after my head hit the pillow my phone rang. It was Kelli telling me that the hospital had called and that we should get back up there because his heart was not doing well. I know we were all out the door within minutes of getting the call but we didn’t make it back to the hospital before he had passed. I know for a fact that my dad did this on purpose. He didn’t want us to have to watch him go, because he knew how hard it would have been on us.

So, again, dad is finally cancer free. I know you were all praying for him and we all know it and appreciate it more than you know. I would ask that you keep up the prayers for my mom. This has obviously been pretty hard on Kelli, me and of course the rest of our family but mom and dad were married almost 40 years. The cancer was hardest on my dad but only slightly less so on mom. As I mentioned above everyone on the 11th floor loved my dad. One of the oncology doctors who came by to see my mom and I in the waiting room told us that he thought my dad was one of the strongest and positive people he had ever met. Dad went through fully 3 inductions and the doctors were constantly amazed at not only his strength, but his ability to be positive and maintain a sense of humor though out. So keep up the prayers for mom and if you have a moment during the day, give her a call to let her know she isn’t alone. It is fine for me and Kelli to say it but she needs to know that there are others out there, far far away who also care and are thinking about her. I know that Kelli and I will do everything we can to help but it will take more than just the two of us to even begin try to and fill the void left by the great man my dad was.

I know that I will think about him all the time. I already do. I know that he lives on in my sense of humor, and the way I try and be as good a dad as he was to my children.

Thanks again for your support. I’m pretty sure Kelli will be sending out another email shortly with info on the party we are going to have for dad (because he didn’t want anyone moping around at a funeral for him).

Sorry for the rambling nature of this, tried to keep it as concise as I could.

Much love all,

-Dean (& Kelli)