These entries have been coming far less frequently than the events.  Apparently, I’m a worthless documentarian.

Dad and I were alone on Monday morning.  Everyone else at work.  Dad was in bed down the hall, and I in the living room half-watching TV and listening to music and wandering The Tubes.  He was in moaning, and at times, screaming, in pain.  After this went on for a couple of hours–in retrospect, I feel cruel for having waited so long–I called my mother.  She came home, we call an ambulance, he went to the hospital.

He got out yesterday.  He spent several days getting treated, lying down, with odd boots massaging his ankles to try to reduce the swelling in them, with a new chemo treatment to try to shrink his liver (which is now so large it stick about 20cm below his ribcage), and with a mountain of new and powerful painkillers.

He’s now so weak he cannot stand from the toilet without help.  He’s on oxygen.  We’ve put six pillows on top of a chair in the living room–it’s like a big stool now–so he can sit on it, and still have a fighting chance to stand again.

The doctor’s report that if this newest batch of chemo doesn’t take, he has only weeks to live.  Weeks.  So far, it’s not taking.  My mother, at this moment, is making phone calls to get help.  My brother and I are supposed to move out tomorrow.  She recently had shoulder surgery, and doesn’t have the strength to help him up the stairs, or out of a toilet seat, or just about anything else right now.

It would be surprising if he lasted until Christmas.

Edema is a side-effect of cancer, in which fluid builds up interstitially in the body.  The result of which is immense swelling in various places on the body.  My dad suffers from edema mostly in his face, his stomach, and his feet.  This, coupled with the weightloss, and his legs and waist have become so thin he needs suspenders to hold his pant up, and yet, his face and stomach are so bloated he looks, from the waist up, that he’s gained a hundred pounds.

Dad’s edema was the worst it’s ever been yesterday morning.  It’s hard to describe the extent of the bloating.  It was almost like looking at tootsie roll pop–a long thin stick with a big round thing on top.  From the waist up, he’s like a snowman–one big round ball with another, slightly smaller round ball on top.  From the waist down, he’s just two reeds that connect his snowman’s upper body to the Earth.

He rested a lot through the day, sleeping, or at least, lying down whenever he could.  He managed to compose himself enough to cut the turkey and eat the meal, which was quiet and tasty.

It’s just bizarre to consider that this is probably his last Thanksgiving.

Since becoming informed of Dad’s prognosis, “for the last time” has been a theme in my thoughts.  He just celebrated my mom’s birthday for the last time.  He is about to celebrate Thanksgiving, and soon, Christmas and New Year’s Eve for the last time.  If he makes it that long, he’ll celebrate both my brother’s birthday’s for the last time.  Every annual thing that happens, for my dad, happens for the last time.

This condition is really a strange one.  At least, it seems strange in contrast to what we’re used to on television, especially in sports.  When a remarkable athlete decides he will retire at the end of the season, his road games are called a “farewell tour”, and fans flock to the stadiums just to see one player from an opposing team.  The player might not do anything memorable–Cal Ripken went 0-7 with 4 strikeouts in his final road game–but people are happy just to say that they were there for the player’s last game. 

Now, Cal Ripken probably shouldn’t have played baseball, full time, in 2001.  He couldn’t hit for much anymore, and he especially couldn’t hit righthanded pitching.  He got by on his reputation, his devoted fanbase, his status as a future Hall of Famer, and the fact that he would only being doing this for one year. 

In real life, my Dad could probably go on a sort of farewell tour.  Make sure to hit up all of the family holidays and see everybody.  Go someplace he’s always wanted to go, do things he’s always wanted to do.  These, again, are the TV/movie options.  If this was a movie, someone would convince Dad to do these things, and he’d end up in Amsterdam smoking grass, or in Tibet to find himself, or he’d go scuba diving with sharks in the Great Barrier Reef.  And then, after he’s done all these wonderful things, he’d finally “get sick”, and end up in a bed someplace, but wouldn’t lose his perspective, and, like Morrie, he’d tell all his friends and relatives to go and Carpe Diem/Live Life to the Full/Do What Makes You Happy/Noli Nothis Permittere Te Terere/Get Your Pets Spade and Neutered/Always Wear Sunscreen. 

And then, with tubes sticking out from all over him, we, Dad’s beloved, would sneak him out of the house or hospital, to help him do that final thing he’s always wanted, whatever it is, no matter how ludicrous.  If this was a movie, Dad would get to pitch the first inning of Game 7 of the Phillies World Series while the ghost of his brother plays catcher, or something like that.  And just days or even hours or minutes after that One Last Thing has been done, Dad will go peacefully into that good night.

That’s a fantasy.  And an infuriating one, I’m learning.  It’s true, at this point, Dad is physically capable of getting up and going out and doing things.  But, like Cal Ripken, it probably doesn’t benefit him, or anything else, much.  Would people love to see him?  Of course they would.  But, really, this scarecrow who was my father, doesn’t eat much anymore, he gets sick, often, he can’t always talk, he sleeps a lot, and he generally sleeps poorly.  He’s not exactly “good company”.  It would seem unlikely that his body can handle the rigors of travel and adventure.  And this isn’t just that he can’t handle in that, he’s too tired, and he needs to sleep.  He can’t handle it in that, he could probably die. 

Plus, he’s seeing doctors for tests and treatment a few times a week.  If he leaves these people, who knows how quickly this all goes to pot. 

When I was very young, family Thanksgiving was always at the house my father grew up in.  Since the early 1990s, Thanksgiving has always been at my parents’ house.  For the first time in at least 15 years, Thanksgiving is going to change locales.  The family will gather at my cousin’s house.  It’s perfectly fine, and understanding, and, really, it’s probably necessary, but it’s odd. 

It also poses a dilemma, for me, at least.  I have three options.  I can go to my cousin’s and spend Thanksgiving with most of my extended family.  I can go to Katie’s, and spend Thanksgiving with her and her siblings and parents and crazy dog.  Or I can stay home, in what may be a less than pleasant affair, and spend Thanksgiving with my Dad, for the last time. 

The choice, I think, is obvious.  It’s just a miserable fact of life that technology and science allow doctors to determine how much time we have left in this world, but they can’t make that limited amount of time livable. 

Dad, generally, doesn’t care to move too far from home, unless he’s headed for the Linc or the Bank for Eagles or Phillies game, or headed to the shore for vacation.  Somehow, Mom convinced him to head downtown, to get a second opinion regarding treatment and prognosis of his deadlegs from the doctors at Penn. 

I don’t have a clue what’s causing his legs to go out like this.  He needs to use his arms to stand up, grabbing tables and chairs and sinks and whatever else he needs to get up.  His legs just aren’t strong enough on their own anymore.  Hopefully, they’ll give him some answers today. I’ll update this post as soon as we have more information.

Update 11/13:  The Penn doctors want to get Dad in for another MRI and either a catscan or a petscan, or both.  Apparently, there’s some more cancer higher up on his spine.  They also want to see if the radiation and the chemo are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

In the fall of my freshman year of college, my father was feeling sick and his doctor told him he had bronchitis, and prescribed penicillin.  My father continued to feel lousy, and due to his distaste for men in white coats, he avoided his doctor for a few more weeks until, finally, his wife, my mother, forced him back.  Again, penicillin, but, just a precaution, the doctor did an x-ray, or an MRI, or something (I can’t remember what now). 

When the results came in, my dad was instructed to go to the hosptial, immediately. 

Dad had been misdiagnosed.  He had pneumonia, and for over a month, he had been walking around with a lung that was slowly filling with fluid.  So bad was his state that the doctors had to perform surgery to drain the lung which was 50% underwater.  For a month, my father had felt, quite literally, like he was drowning.  Normally, the doctors insert a tube, and suck out the liquid.  So long had my father had liquid in his lungs, that a great deal of the fluid had crusted, and needed to be scraped off.  This operation had him spend over a week in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, gave him an 8 inch scar on his torso, and put him in such incredible pain that I saw my father cry for the first, and only, time. 

Eventually, he got better.  Of course, in the fall of 2003, during my sophomore year, which was rapidly falling apart, my dad fell in our yard.  It was raining, and slick, and he fell on his back, onto a stump.  I had moved home, and was at a computer at 1:30 in the morning, writing a paper, when my father entered and said, “TC, I think I need you to take me to the hospital.” 

I hadn’t even known that he had fallen at the time.  I was at work when it happened, and didn’t get home until he, and everyone else in the house, had gone to bed.  I grabbed my shoes and jacket and car keys, and took him to the hospital.  He vomited several times along the way.  I stayed with him there until past 4AM.  The doctors wanted to run a test, and Dad had to drink barium for it.  He vomited that up, too, and to my disgust, the doctors yelled at him for it.  For drinking it too fast.  Jesus Christ. 

He’s been back to the hospital every year since those two.  Finally, last year, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  This news came as stunning, but unsurprising, and sad, but not devastating, if that makes any sense.  We understood that his odds of recovery were nearly 100%, and, at least, I don’t recall being too worried at the time.  I felt bad.  I understood, roughly, how hard things would be for my dad.  My mom, of course, was worried sick.  But he went through chemo, and radiation, and lost his hair and his moustache. 

He had just really begun to grow everything back, given a clean bill of health and all, when he started feeling like crap again about a month ago.  To the doctors he went, again.  They found cancer, again.  This time in his liver, and the cancer was NOT liver cancer, and it was NOT prostate cancer.  He had some kind of cancer, and they couldn’t figure out what.  One week and a bunch of tests and miserable days in the hospital later, my mom informs my brothers and I that dad has cancer at the base of his spine.  A couple days after that, we find out about my uncle having lung cancer.  A week after that, my mom finds out Dad has less than a year to live. 

And, I suppose, that’s where we are today. 

On Tuesday night, my mother asked me to go to Wawa (a convenience store/deli just across the street from our house) to get some cheese and bread.  My father, who spends most of his day sleeping, was hungry enough to eat, and wanted a grilled cheese. 

Over I went, to discover only that Wawa was out of American cheese.  I came back to the house, empty-handed, and informed Ma.  She almost cried.  “He’s finally ready to eat something and I can’t even make him a fucking grilled cheese.”  I assured her that everything was okay, and that I was only back in the house to grab car keys and head to the grocery store.  I went, and returned, and to the best of my knowledge, my father ate a single grilled cheese, which might have been his first food in several days. 

Before I was born, my dad was 6′4″ tall and weighed roughly 190 pounds.  He then got into an accident, falling from a barn roof, and was abruptly 6′3″ tall.  Age and lifestyle have taxed another inch or so from him.  Over the past 5 years, various illnesses have also taxed his weight.  I don’t know exactly how much he weighs now–he lies to my mother, and says he still weighs 180 pounds.  I wouldn’t estimate he weighs more than 150 or 160 pounds.  The bones in his arms are visible, and he has that coat-hanger look to him, as though everything he puts on is too large, meant for someone else.  Even his skin is loose and sallow, like weird, pale rags on reed-thin bones.  And yet, his face is still so round his jawline is barely visible, and the creases from his wrinkles are mostly gone. 

Katie’s mom offered to help with Thanksgiving.  For more than the past 15 years, my extended family has ventured to our house for Thanksgiving, where my father and mother would create an outstanding meal for a vast number of people.  The fewest we ever had were 18, and the most family to attend Thanksgiving at our modest home were over 30.  It was crowded, and loud. 

Well, now that Dad is sick enough that he sleeps most of the day, and his treatment–chemotherapy and radiation–has taken his appetite, Thanksgiving has been moved to my cousin’s house.  My parents, at least, won’t be attending.  Katie’s mom invited my family for dinner, or, if my mom preferred, the turkey would be cooked and delivered to our home by Katie’s family. 

I passed the offer on to my mom today.  I’m sure she’ll talk about it with Dad tonight.  I’m equally confident they will decline the offer.  Dad’s getting treatment two days before Thanksgiving, and it would seem foolish to get help for a meal that my father cannot eat.

Mom had shoulder surgery on Friday, and so she’s been hopped up on pain killers for a few days.  Dad, yesterday, felt lung pain and a total lack of energy, and so my Uncle John–dad’s older brother–took Dad to the hospital. 

They released him a few hours later, but I haven’t heard any details as to what was getting to him in particular yesterday.  I’m going to try to get more information today, but it’s a busy day, so we’ll have to see.

Update: The doctors concluded that Dad was going through nothing more than “cancer pain”, which doesn’t sound genuine to me.  It, in fact, sounds more like a non-explanation.  “Cancer pain”.  Bullshit.  Hopefully, Dad takes everyone’s advice, and ditches Bryn Mawr for some help at Penn or Jefferson hospitals. 

Dad was somewhat insane, obviously.  I guess he is somewhat insane.  While walking the dogs one winter night in the early 1990s (I would guess I was about 10, and Stephen about 7), my father and I saw a light flash across the sky.  He said nothing, wondering if he had one too many beers, but then I asked if that was a shooting star.  Stephen had seen this thing, too, a star shaped like a tooth that seemed to hover in the air for a moment before it bolted off.  Honestly, to this day, I don’t know what I saw.  I don’t trust my own memory of the sight, and it could have easily been a shooting star or meteor, or perhaps a satellite or some kind of jet.  The three of us, however, at the time, didn’t know what we had seen, and we spent a couple of days talking about UFOs and aliens and whatever.  Naturally, Dad spent the next two years recording every UFO and alien related program on TV.  I have no idea why. 

Everyone’s favorite of my father’s obsessions, was when he decided squirrels–yes the bushy tailed rodents–were evil.  Not nuisances.  Evil.  We were having trouble with them because they would steal food from the bird feeder that hung outside our dining room window.  This would cause its own problems inside our house because our oversized, half-blind golden retriever, Caesar, had somehow learned that birds were okay, and squirrels were bad, and would start barking his immense, roaring bark whenever a squirrel made its way to the feeder.  The bark would startle some poor person who was carrying the morning’s eggs or coffee, and before you know it, our carpet had added yet another stain, and someone would probably be picking up the broken pieces of a coffee mug or plate. 

Anyway, to combat the Squirrel Problem, Dad found an ancient squirrel trap, and bought a second one.  He went on the internet and learned two things: 1) squirrels really like peanut butter and 2) squirrels will find their way back home as long as they are within two miles (I think) of said home.  So Dad loaded his traps with PB, and once they were caught, he loaded the them into the back of his truck, and hauled them at least two miles away, releasing them into the yards of people he didn’t like.  Seriously.  The great squirrel war ended near the end of the summer when Dad crossed the line and decided to get a BB gun.  He was the only one home, at the time, and, bored, perhaps, he loaded the gun, went to the yard, took aim, and hit a squirrel directly in the stomach.  Naturally, he mortally wounded the thing, but before it died, it scraped its way across our yard, spewing blood and guts everywhere, before croaking near the backdoor.  Horrified, my father called my mother right then just to ask her, “I’m not a bad person, am I?”  Thus ended the squirrel incident.

When I was 16, I received my learner’s permit, and was able to be taught to drive.  And so, my father took me on my first driving lesson.  We first went to Calvary Cemetery, which is an enormous Catholic cemetery a few miles from my house, where my father’s parents, and his deceased siblings are buried.  The place is great for early lessons in driving because it have just about everything you might experience as far as road conditions are concerned: uphills, downhills, gradual bends in roads, sharp turns, stop signs.  What it does not have, generally, is other cars. 

We went around Calvary on a cool, cloudy day in my dad’s rickety blue van.  The van was another fun thing to learn to drive in: the rearview mirror was useless, and the sideview mirrors were close to useless.  If you can handle that thing, you can drive anything (short of a helicopter), and if you could learn to parallel park it (which I did) you could parallel park anything (which I can).  We drove about aimlessly for an hour, I think, until my dad told me to turn left, turn right, and pull over.  I did so, and he got out of the truck and so I got out of the truck. 

We walked over to the family grave, where his brothers Tommy (called Murph for his love of potatoes), and Jimmy, and Henry were buried.  Jimmy was very close to my father when they were children.  He was 2 or 3 years older, and went through two tours in Vietnam, relatively unscathed.  Upon the completion of his second term, he came home, and within two weeks, he was killed in a fatal car accident, and buried on my father’s 18th birthday.  It’s tempered all of his birthdays since.  Murph died the summer before 8th grade, for me, I think.  It might have been the summer after 8th.  Heart attack.  He was around 60, I think.  I don’t know when or how Henry died.  I think that it happened before I was born, also, or when I was very young. 

We stood in front of the tombstones, silent, for a couple of minutes, looking down at the names and dates.  And he spoke, his voice cracking, “Hey guys.  I miss you.  I really wish you were around.”  And then we turned and got in the truck, Dad driving, and we left the cemetery. 

It doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but somehow, that was the defining moment of my youth, of my relationship with my dad.  Standing in an empty cemetery, mourning brothers who were long lost.  He expressed an emotion that wasn’t pleasure from something funny happening, or angst from something miserable.  There was something new, to me, there. 

I also considered calling this post “The Victim”, but that seems a little too morbid.

My dad, Mike, was born September 30th, 1952, in Rosemont, PA, or thereabouts.  He was the 8th of 11 children.  Older than he were 5 boys and 2 girls, and younger than he were 2 boys and 1 girl.  He was, quite obviously, born into your typical mid-20th Century Irish Catholic family.  He grew up across the street from another family which had even more kids than his own, and these two families notoriously roamed the streets of Rosemont and Garrett Hill getting into trouble.  My mother, who knew my Uncle Eddie before she knew my father, once made a deal with Eddie: for every day Eddie attended school, my mother would pay him a dime.  For every day Eddie skipped, he’d pay my mother the same.  Apparently, Eddie still owes my mother some money. 

My grandmother, whom I’ve never met, or can’t recall meeting if I have, was, it would seem, the type of harried mother of eleven that was somewhat typical in the 1950s and 1960s.  She would tell her children not to climb on the roof, or up a tree, and when the children inevitably did so, anyway, and fell, breaking a leg, sympathy was not forthcoming.  She would, instead, yell and scream about the thickheadedness of her children, and grudgingly drive the injured to the hospital, while the rest scattered to the wind like leaves.  She was, by all accounts, a good mother. 

My grandfather, James Harvey Shillingford, affectionately called “J Harv” by his children (never to his face, of course), has always been, in my mind, another sort of 1950/60s stereotype.  Gruff, stern, distant, a working man, and with a bit of a drinking problem.  I have never met him, either.  My favorite story involving him is when J Harv, one afternoon, backed over the family dog, while exiting the driveway.  As his children screamed, J Harv, confused, stopped the car, changed gears, and pulled back into his spot, running the dog over a second time, and permanently ending any chance of survival for the poor thing. 

A number of my aunts and uncles expected my father to become a Catholic priest.  Apparently, Dad was quite the dedicated alterboy.  Until, of course, Dad got in a little trouble with the law–as a 12 year old–and was forbidden to participate in the church service in which the visiting Bishop would be present.  Dad quit his duties as an alter boy, and thereafter stopped going to church.  He’s never really picked it up again, going only when my mother forces him to.  Instead of his supposed destiny as a man of the cloth, Dad made it through high school, did this and that while my mother went to Hollins College in Virginia, and eventually became an electrician, at first working for a company, before setting off on his own. 

Growing up, I had mixed feelings about my dad.  He smoked cigarettes, and drank too much, and could become frightening in his drinking.  Violent, sometimes, or, at least, more prone to violence.  If my brothers or I did something wrong, we would normally get a spanking.  If Dad had been drinking, that spanking was all the more severe.  It is what it is.  We all survived, and are more or less healthy and happy, or whatever. 

Dad isn’t an emotional guy.  Mom reports that he cries, from time to time, while watching sad movies or something like that.  I’ve seen him cry once.  A month before my 19th birthday.  We’ll deal with that in another post.  Primarily, my dad has a sort of neutral emotion.  He can be found, most times of the day, sitting at the head of the dining room table, his skinny legs crossed at the knees, reading the newspaper.  During the week, it was the Philadelphia Daily News (Philly’s magazine style paper, like the NY Post), and on the weekends, he switched to the Philadelphia Inquirer (the paper of record).  He moved to the living room to watch TV for sports games.  Eagles or Phillies or Flyers or Sixers or Penn State football or Villanova basketball (with lesser affections for the other Big 5 schools).  Sports, like just about anything else, evoked one of two emotions from my father: annoyance, and joy.  Annoyance, of course, had many shades.  Sometimes, it would build into rage: kids’ report cards weren’t so great, there are bills to pay, his customers are late in paying him, and now the Eagles lose, and so, he’d blow his top.  His anger was, generally, a slow build to a big explosion. 

Another shade of annoyance was when it was impossible to tell if Dad was in a good mood or a bad one.  My younger brother, Stephen, once walked into the living room where my Dad and I were watching TV, and said “hi”.  He might have said it in a silly voice, I can’t remember.  Not that it matters, because seconds later, Stephen was sent to his room to the night “for being weird”. 

Dad was a tough guy to understand, when we were children. 

Talked to Mom last night.  She wants us to go, it seems.  She thinks she’ll want the chance to be alone, when Dad dies, and she can’t be by herself if we’re still around.  She knows we’ll be close, and we’ll be able to come home as frequently as she needs us to.  I can’t say I feel great about it, but she seemed genuine, and not like she was just trying to say “what I wanted to hear”.  And so the apartment hunt resumes, in earnest.