Just been in England for two weeks, where the sister of my (English) fiancé has got a stage 4 lung cancer. She was going to get married before she got too weak and we were attending it. But this mail isn't about her... yet.
Three days after coming home from England I was at work when I got a phone call... "Your father is really really sick now." So I just packed my bags again and booked a ticket to Iceland, where I have my (Icelandic) father's side of the family. He's got a stage 4 prostate cancer and has now been placed at a hospice in Kopavogur. Lately his health has been like a roller coaster and he has gone in and out of hospital. Now he had gotten an infection and was also constantly losing blood. His cancer had now spread to the bones and the treatment didn't do anything anymore. But an alternate treatment was planned, though he had to be both stronger and more stabile than he was for the moment. So he hadn't been placed at that hospice for the same reason as the other patients there, to get as much life quality in their last days. It was just better for him to be there for now. I had been there for 5 days and my sister for 2 and we sat alone with him. The fever rised and everything got worse. The situation reached the level where the nurses got other faces, offered us a book with the title "At The End" to prepare us... and finally also offered us a priest to help us with support. And when people with extensive experience of dying patients are doing things like that... you more or less know what to expect and we called his fiancé and my other sister. So for a couple of hours we all then sat there looking at his breathing and wondering if there would come another breath after that... when he suddenly stopped moaning and started to breath normally again and finally fell asleep. The man surprised everyone, including staff... and when we came back the next day we couldn't believe our eyes when we entered the room and saw him in sitting in his chair laughing at the TV. I had to go back home to Sweden the 23:th. Christmas Eve at home is the price of having children. But daily reports from my family has said that after this horrible night he has slowly but steadily gotten better and better... one foot in front of the other... and optimism has found its way into us again. Maybe he would get a chance to get that treatment after all. Isolating his cancer to his bones could give him a considerable amount of time. But this morning I talked to my sister. Yesterday her husband (also a doctor) had spoken to my father's doctor, who said something none of us had expected after seen him "climbing" like this. We should hope for weeks rather than months. My sister didn't catch the reason why but obviously something still is very wrong, despite the looks of it. This got a little bit longer than planned. Making long stories short has never been my field. The only thing I wanted with it was to ask for prayers... that this probably rather short time that he has left will be as pain free as possible. /Nick -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VFB Mail" group. To post to this group, send email to vfb-mail@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to vfb-mail-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vfb-mail?hl=en VFB Mail is sponsored by Line's End Inc at http://www.linesend.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VFB Mail" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to vfb-mail+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
