My daddy (my first love)

I have been meaning to write this post for awhile now. I had been putting it off and putting it off. I am gonna try to make it short and sweet because I don’t like to dwell on this. It hurts too much still.

What made me write this post today is I had clicked on this yahoo video link that said father and daughters dance too close…..It turned out to be about a father and daughter dance competition. It looked a lot like the dancing they do in Dancing With The Stars and yes they were dancing too close LOL but after that video went off a video about Patrick Swayze having pancreatic cancer came on and I nearly cried. I love love love Patrick Swayze. Its funny because yesterday I wanted to write a post about all of my celebrity crushes and post pictures and yes Patrick was going to be on that list. I could not write that post yet because I wanted to get this one out the way. The reason why the Patrick Swayze video made me wanna write this post is my father passed away from Pancreatic/Liver Cancer this past September.

In July, I found out my father was in the hospital. He called me one day from LBJ hospital while I was working, and told me he had been in the hospital all week. I asked him why he hadn’t called me sooner. My guess is he didn’t wanna worry me. He said the guy in the room with him, a patient, had nudged him to call. I was like you should have wanted to call me. He had been diagnosed with high blood pressure. He was having some trouble breathing which is what forced him to go to the doctor and get a check up. They ended up sending him home and putting him on medication to stabilize it. I thought it was not a big deal really. Truth is the majority of my family has high blood pressure and is taking medication to control it, so I sadly was not that concerned. Hell I am 26 and found out year before at the health fare at my job that I am “borderline” and need to keep getting myself checked.

While my father was in the hospital in July, I did manage to go take the very long bus ride to see him however (we live on opposite sides of the city and I had no transportation at the time) before he got released. It really surprised me on how much weight he had lost from the last time I had seen him. My father has always been a small man so he really did not need to be losing more weight. But this was not the first time I had noticed my father had lost weight. He had been slowly dropping weight I guess for a year before he passed. Each time he came out to see me at my home, I would comment to him “Dad, you are losing weight…… Are you eating anything?” and he would say “Yea Chris I been eating” and I would always see the worry around his eyes when I would comment about it but I would just ignore it. I thought he was out partying and drinking and not taking the time to eat which he probably was and I would worry but try to put it out of my mind. And if he was sick, I knew my dad was not going to no doctor. My hate of doctors, from my dad I did receive. Every time I would see my dad he’d say to me “Chris, make sure you take care of yourself girl. We all each other got now. Your mom and your brother not here now. If you sick, go to the doctor.” And I would say right back ” I am . You too, Dad. Take care of yourself too” Too bad he didn’t listen to his own advice and too bad I didn’t nudge him more!! I beat myself up now that my father is gone that I didn’t do more. Yes, he is stubborn, I got that from him too, and probably would not have listened anyway but at least I could have insisted he go get a check up or something and maybe they would have saw it…..

I beat myself up over all my family deaths. My mom died of a heart condition. She was overweight so I beat myself up for awhile for not getting on her to eat more healthy and exercise. Never mind I was only 11 at the time she died, slightly overweight myself, and knew nothing about exercise or eating healthy at that time anyway. My older brother died 10 years after she did from a blood clot that traveled to his lung and I beat myself up about that like I should have been closer with him and maybe I would have seen something to know he was sick so that I could have told him to go to the doctor. My aunt had the nerve to blame me in a way to for my brother death because she asked me for his number one time and I wouldn’t give it to her without asking him first because they were not that close anymore. So when he did die she made a comment like me not giving her his number had something to do with his death. My family…My family.

Back to my father…… so of course the weight lost was a sign of his cancer which no telling how long he did have that. In the Patrick Swayze video, a doctor said pancreatic cancer has a 99% mortality rate. My father’s doctor told me that as well. They don’t really know where my father cancer started, but just from how fast it killed him they believe it may have started in his liver or his pancreas, because its very hard to detect, and by the time it is detected its too late because it moves soo fast. It made me feel better to know that most people miss it so I wasn’t the only one to not notice anything but I DID notice something. I noticed the weight lost and if only I had been just a little more vocal I could have spoke up and told him to go see a doctor.

Well I am surprised I am still beating myself up about it. After my father found out about his high blood pressure, I would talk to him on the phone from time to time and he seemed ok. He just seemed to be worried about eating the right foods. I would tell him to basically stay away from pork, salt , and fried foods. He was extremely worried about this and it hurt my heart that I couldn’t do more for him. *Sighs*

In September, I get a call from my father and he tells me that he wants to see me. I am worried I am like why. He sounds horrible on the phone by the way and I can barely understand what he is saying. He couldn’t really tell me what was going on and the people he was staying with could not either. I was working and could not get a day off and had no transportation. Having no transportation is a real bitch in Houston, by the way, if you ever move here. Houston is too big and spaced out to not have transportation. Anyway I spent about a good week worrying and crying to Bryant before I finally was able to call in sick. Bryant (he was wonderful thru all of this) gave me the money to rent a car that same day, I went by Walmart to get my dad a portable cd player he had been asking me for and I was going to take him the Johnny Taylor cds I had made him for his birthday that I never got a chance to get to him.

When I got to his house, he stay with his brother. I walked in and I sat down in the living room. My dad’s brother girlfriend was sitting in the living room and told me that my dad’s two sisters were in his bedroom giving him a bath. That was the first sign that something was off. I was thinking why can’t my father bathe himself? Is he really that sick? I had no idea and alot of questions. I asked the older woman how is he? How is my father? He doing ok? She said naw, I am not going to say that. I am not going to lie to you like that baby girl. Second sign, and I felt my stomach doing somersaults. When I called earlier in the week, I had a chance to speak to one of my father’s nieces that was over visiting and she had told me that he was ok. He was doing good. So that reassured me some but now it looks like things were not good at all.

Finally the door to my dad’s bedroom opened and out my aunts came. I hugged them and went in to see my father. He was nothing but bones. So small and I just wanted to cry. He spoke soo softly that I could barely hear him. I pulled up a chair next to his bed and just held his hand and rubbed his head. He reminded me of a sick little boy I just wanted to hold him. My Aunt came in there and sat down with me and she asked me is there anything that you wanna know? You feel like we have been hiding things from you? I said I just want to know whats going on with my dad. I noticed that his stomach was blowed up and I asked her about it and she said its cancer. My heart dropped. My dad just looked at me with those big puppy dog eyes that looked like mine and I felt soo sorry for him and sorry for myself. My aunt was like we’ll talk before you leave and left out to the room for me to be alone with my dad. I got closer on him and kissed him on the lips and lay down next to him and cried like a baby. He said ” I just gotta get better Chris. We all each other got” .

Before I left I sat in the living room with my Aunt and they told me that he has cancer. One day his feet and his stomach blew up big, they took him to the doctor to get a biopsy and it came back that he had cancer. It had spread and they didn’t tell my father this. They felt he didn’t need to know because he was already worrying soo much.

Not even a week after I seen my father, I got another call from the hospital that my dad had been admitted and it didn’t look good. They wanted to know how soon I could get down there, because his doctor really needed to speak to me. I felt sick. I called my Aunt (the one I had previously fell out with) and told her what was going on. I really needed to talk to someone. I still had the rental car so I flew down the freeway doing 80-90. When I got to the hospital, 3 of my dad sisters were there and his niece. The doctor was asking me all this questions about if my dad was to go into cardiac arrest should they resusitate. They told me how fragile his bones was and that it might lead to them breaking bones if I wanted them to do chest compressions. They tried to lead me to make the right decision which was to let him die because there was nothing they could do for him. They wanted to “make him comfortable” which consisted on giving him medicine for the pain and letting him go. I was in denial and all this did not sound good to me. I wanted him to live. They finally let me see my father before he was taking up to his room and he had an oxygen mask on and was really weak. Oh how I hated to see him like that. My father’s stay there was about a week long before he passed. I took off work for the whole time he was in he hospital. One thing I can say is he was surrounded in love. I was up there everyday from 10 to about 8 or 9 and so was his sisters and nieces. He was never alone except when we left for the night. We had the option to stay the night with him, but I could not bare it. Before he became doped up with morpheine I knew he was aware that I was there. One day I came to visit him and his family was all in the room, I walked in and my father sat straight up and said “Hey, Chris!” and then he layed backed down and didn’t say another word. Weird. I thought that must have took a lot out of him for him to  sit up and acknowledge me but I was glad that he did.

The day my father died. I walked in the room and only one of his sisters was there, she said she was going downstairs to smoke a cigarette. I sat down and noticed that my dad’s breathing was not sounding good. I knew it wouldn’t be long. I just sat there and held his hand and watched him and told him how much I love him. My dad took his last breath and I am happy to say that I was there with him. Just me and him. I love you daddy. You were the best daddy that you could be to me and you spoiled me rotten. I will never forget you…..