12-14-2023, 08:48 PM
(12-14-2023, 07:13 PM)putnam6 Wrote: So sorry for your loss
No, you did the best you guys could with the information given. We went through the same with my Dad October 3rd 2014 we found out he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer, he had pain in his stomach area, and always thought it was his ulcer, but it wasn't. He had gone in and when he found out he just had them do a nerve block so he couldn't feel the pain. A few weeks in he was down to 136 lbs he was 6'2' and 175 normally, we put him on parenteral nutrition I had already moved in with my Mom and Dad to help, and we went into what my mom and siblings called 24 hour emergency mode, we learn how to hook him up and feed him through his port.
Initially, the chemo knocked down his numbers and even though the nurses and the doctors said he wouldn't likely reach his normal weight EVER we got him to 165 his strength came back a little at a time, but after months and months he even got in his van and drove around a bit, its those little victories, I was nervous as shit and told him no LOL and he barked at me he was going. He was fine and was happy as hell he did it. We loved him so much and he hated that we had to take care of him and he had lost his independence.
This is 2015 and he had begun eating again late in the year, and he had a good Christmas with all his grandkids and children with him. then in January, his numbers started to go up, the doctors recommended a new treatment but with it being new his insurance wouldn't pay for it, till it became an acceptable treatment he missed 3-4 weeks before they got him on the new treatment. When he got the new treatment it wiped him out, and he started regressing by his 5th treatment we were getting him ready to go in and he had a heart attack and stroke I spent 23 days in the hospital he passed away April 5th 2016 at 1:47 AM.
We didn't speak about it till much later but we all wished we had never switched treatments, especially to a new one that his insurance would not pay on initially. Obviously, there were no guarantees but it always felt like missing those 4 weeks and the strain of the new more aggressive treatment did him no favors in the end. Lord my sister and I cried after she and Mom took a little lighted Christmas tree to his gravesite this year. We thought we had saved him for at least another year or so. It still messes with me, he was such a great dad all of our kids adored him and he was very accomplished he didn't care about that he loved his wife and his family. It is brutal, life doesn't prepare you to make those types of decisions. I almost said something, I almost said let's go somewhere else the other cancer center in town, I found out later did the same treatments and had other treatment options that our original center didn't have.
Don't get me wrong the original center was very well run and professional and took great care of the many hours we were there every week, it's just those last 4 months...
All you can do is the best with the information you have at the moment. I am grateful we gave him a few more months and a holiday season. It's like my daughters said much later, it allowed them to come to grips with the inevitability of it all.
Again so sorry for your loss, but you did the right thing and if you had chosen the opposite you would have still had these conflicting thoughts, it is just the reality of the horrible situation.
Prayers to you and yours and thanks for listening to my rambling rendition of my father's last chapter.
Yes, Big Pharma is BS, they are about treating and not curing, but you were right in trying.
Thank you so much for sharing, I think my issue when first writing this, was more or less now that I read it again, and reading that you went through something similar is, after seeing/reading/speaking/listening all these years, its easier to blame the system I am so hell bent on exposing in some way, and now I have lived through it, and am not sure what part I played or not played in all of this.
This was the first time, I seriously went towards the house that was on fire, instead of walking away from it. Every part of my being was like "you know how this works", and I could do nothing about it, when it was right in my face.
Now that I am trying slowly to come back to research, I had no one to ask or to share this part of my mind because no one would understand or think that I am nuts, to even put some kind of "conspiracy" spin on it. Thank you for your response, it means a lot.
Peace, NRE
