1. The Death of a Good, Good Man.
Part 1 of 3
On Wednesday, May 29th, 2024, my father died.
Seven days before that, I got on an airplane to fly from Charlotte, North Carolina to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where my father had collapsed after a doctors appointment.
Twelve days before that, I had a heart procedure to close the hole in my heart - a patent foramen ovale, leftover remnants from fetal circulation that should have closed in the hours or days after birth, but did not.
One day before that, my Dad, Jerry, started his 7th round of chemotherapy.
***
In 2020, Dad was diagnosed with an acute, aggressive Lymphoma, and started a 6 cycle round of chemotherapy. The good news was that the cancer he had typically responded well to treatment, and there was a greater than 90% chance of remission.
The bad news was that type of cancer almost always returned.
In 2024, Dad’s cancer returned. He had enjoyed nearly 4 years of relative health (the original cancer and subsequent chemotherapy had weakened him significantly, but he still had a great quality of life, and was happy to be alive.)
Faced with another possible battle with lymphoma, after having bested it before, Dad decided to go ahead with another run of chemotherapy. He looked at the gauntlet ahead of him through rose colored glasses - I remembered the heartbreaking, frustrated phone calls as he described the bone pain and the mouth sores, his hair falling out in clumps and his inability to stay warm no matter what he did. He had endured weeks and weeks of suffering, but it had paid off the first time.
This time, the first round of chemotherapy - intended to bring hope, longevity, and more health - brought catastrophe. Within minutes of his infusion, Dad experienced “Tumor Lysis Syndrome.” It was explained to me as the radical dying of the tumor cells and cell parts being released into Dad’s bloodstream and overwhelming his system, and causing an anaphylactic-like response. He couldn’t breathe, his heart was racing, and he began to panic.
My Mom called me with crisis in her voice. “Mandy, Dad’s having a reaction to the chemotherapy. He can’t breathe. They are doing everything they can. Mandy, I’m not sure he’s going to make it.” I could hear the fear, and yet I knew there was nothing I could do. I got the phone call - the one where you sit in fear and worry - and I had made that phone call. All I could do was send up my version of a prayer.
Two hours went by without communication, and in my heart my father was simultaneously still alive and already gone.
***
Finally my phone rang and I answered without breath in my lungs.
“Hey daughter.”
I collapsed into tears at the sound of my Dad’s voice. I had already been preparing for the worst, and he was okay.
He was okay.
***
Wednesday, May 22nd - just twelve days later, Mom and Dad drove from their tiny town of Hinton, Alberta into the city, Edmonton, to meet with Dad’s oncologist. They had no idea what to expect, but it was clear that Dad wouldn’t be able to move forward with chemotherapy. In the meeting, Dad wasn’t his typical self - he was altered and agitated. The doctor noticed that Dad was acting unusual and sent him down to the emergency department for some intravenous fluids, and ordered a bunch of labs to try to figure out what would happen next.
After the emergency department, Mom took Dad to the hotel to get some sleep, but Dad was weak and had trouble walking. He was agitated and irritated, and angry… and then completely incoherent. He couldn’t sleep. He just kept trying to get out of the bed to go to the bathroom. After jumping up to help him and then getting him back in the bed for half the night, she was thoroughly exhausted. At some point near morning, Dad finally collapsed on the floor and Mom couldn’t get him up again. She called 911.
I answered her call around 6am, and she was weeping and exhausted. She told me the whole story, ending with Dad’s collapse and how hard she tried. She was just so tired. She told me over and over again that she felt terrible for calling for help, but she didn’t know what else to do.
“You did the right thing, Mom. That’s when you are supposed to call 911. You needed help.”
Mom was so wrung out, she was nearly hysterical. I told her to get in the bed and get some sleep. We hung up, and I called my two older brothers and updated them on the situation. My brother Ryan got in his car immediately and started driving the 3 hours to the hospital.
I paced and waited for a few hours to get some updates on how Dad was doing, but Mom isn’t a medical person and she was just so overwhelmed - it was hard to get helpful information out of her. I really didn’t understand what was going on - based on her descriptions, I felt like things were bad, but I didn’t know. She could have been exaggerating?
Finally, I realized that I was family. Instead of waiting for Mom to give me updates, I just called the hospital and asked to speak to the ER doctor.
I explained that I was Jerry’s daughter, living in the States. I explained that I had some medical knowledge and could fill in Dad’s medical history, and then I asked for a complete overview of what was going on.
It was bad.
Dad’s major organ systems had all started shutting down. He was in severe diabetic ketoacidosis, as well as extremely, dangerously dehydrated. The sodium levels in his body were sky-high - catastrophically high. Brain damage high. The doctor made sure that I knew that dad’s condition was extremely critical, and his prognosis was not good.
As soon as I hung up the phone, I looked at Brock and said, “I have to go.”
It wasn’t just that Dad’s prognosis was poor - I was being pulled. I just knew that I had to go. There was no other option.
***
Four hours later, I was on an airplane, headed to Edmonton. I landed shortly after midnight, Edmonton time, and my middle brother Ryan picked me up from the airport. My eldest brother, Adam, was landing soon, so we waited for him in order to head to the hospital all together.
We walked in through the emergency department entrance, and were guided to Dad’s bed. It was striking - it shocked me to the depths of my soul - how different my Dad was. My whole life, he’s been the most vital, powerful, ALIVE man I’ve ever known. Strong. Funny. Challenging. SOLID. He existed so deeply.
Instead, laying in the bed, he looked wasted. He had lost so much weight, and looked sallow, yellowed, and ill. He recognized us as soon as we walked in, and that was such a wonderful sign - he had been so confused I wasn’t sure he would know us.
As soon as he realized we were there for real, he started crying. “Mandy’s here? Adam’s here?? Oh shit. I must be dying if Mandy is here.”
Despite his immediate recognition of his children, Dad was seriously altered. It was so hard to see - to watch him reach out and grasp at the things he was seeing, to hear him stop in the middle of a sentence to respond to a question that was never asked. He forced me, over and over, to walk to the wall and touch the animals. “Just go right there and touch it, Mand. Just touch right there. Isn’t it a bear??”
We all stayed until 3 am, and then I sent Mom and Adam back to the hotel to get sleep. Ryan packed up and left, too. He had to work at 7am. I told them all I wouldn’t leave Dad alone, and we’d get updates on his condition in the morning.
It was a hard night. Dad was in and out of being oriented - sometimes he knew who he was and where he was, but just as often he was agitated, angry and frustrated that he was stuck in a bed. He got mad at the IV lines and tubes and the catheter. They were checking his blood sugars every 30 minutes and then dosing him with insulin. (His blood sugar was over 1000 when he was admitted, and they had gotten it down to 400 by the time I was there. Still unbelievably high.) I had to have the nurses wrap his arms with gauze to stop him from pulling his IV’s out. I covered him in blankets and talked to him and sang to him and tried to distract him from the agitation that would undo all of the work they were doing trying to keep him alive.
Around 6am, a new ER doc came down to see us. He did a thorough exam on dad and gave me the updates. I asked a million questions. What do the next 3 days look like? The next 3 months? Will dad come back to himself? Can his brain recover? How extensive is the organ damage? Will he ever get out of a bed again? What could his life look like? What about in the face of the lymphoma?
The doctor answered as many questions as he could, but the constant refrain was the truth, “We really don’t know.”
… part 2 forthcoming.