I am asking for a bit of support today.

[TM99]

81. Sad Update

I just received word from my sister that our father is not expected to live through the weekend.

I have some anger at some real and tangible incompetence on the part of the medical professionals my family has trusted since Christmas. His own PCP missed the pneumonia and said he was fine even though both he and my mother had the flu, and she had developed bronchitis. He went to the ER not two days later and they sent him home. Three days after that on New Years Eve, he once again entered the ER and will not leave alive from this hospital. Several MD's had already written him off as dead and with-held treatment which may actually have saved his life. He was delayed on antibiotics for the pneumonia, no pulmonary care was done(he needed the fluids suctioned from his lungs), there was an almost week long delay on a feeding tube, and the throat issues were dismissed as inconsequential.

Now he is simply too weak, too emaciated, and his lungs are too full for him to survive much longer. Thankfully, I got to have a longish talk with him over the phone just a few days ago. He shared those intimacies that a father shares with a child before he dies. My SO was fortunate enough to get to talk to him just this afternoon though he couldn't say much more than a muffled and mumbled I love you both.

I am not a very feeling sort of man. I always tended more to the thinking function, and I am very sad. I can't cry yet. I have so much work to do to help them at a distance. My own health issues will preclude me getting there but we have discussed as a family that we will travel for the memorial and interring of his ashes in a few months. I speak as if it is a done deal. I am not a man of faith or a believer in miracles. The probability of him rallying and surviving this is not very realistic at this point.

Thank you everyone for your supportive words, thoughts, and prayers for me and my family. I will resume posting again here after a needed little break. I will leave a final update when he passes.