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.