He's tired and so am I...

Sat with Pop tonight and had a good, long talk. I told him, at least from what I can gather from the research that I've done, the survivability expectation ranges anywhere from seven months to five years. Those figures, taken from various studies, just confound the hell out of me. "Seven months to five years". What is confounding are the variables. This treatment combined with another treatment, but wait, this other treatment might work better when combined with chemo (he's not a candidate), combined with...hell, I don't know.

Here's what I do know, and we talked about it tonight, Pop is prepared to live...he's also prepared to die. Damn, that's difficult to write. Tonight though, I finally stirred up enough courage to ask him about his feelings.

His response? I'll try to give it to you as accurately as possible...

My question to him was as follows;

"Pop, how do you feel about this? The cancer and what the future may hold?"

His response was with little emotion and matter of fact...

"Son, I could die tonight, I could die tomorrow, or I could die five years from now. I'm not surprised that I have cancer, but I'm not going to give up. Hell, yes, I'm going to fight it, but if I lose, so be it. I'm eighty years old..you've got to die of something".

At that point, I reminded him of my promise. Years ago, before mother died from complications of Alzheimer's, we agreed that we wouldn't allow her to die in a nursing home. We kept that promise. She died at home.

I'll never put my dad in a nursing home. I did, however, ask his thought's about hospice. To that, he was agreeable, as he understands that he really wouldn't be cognizant of what was happening anyway. Furthermore, hospice is miles away from a nursing home with regard to care and compassion.

As I write this, I am conflicted. As much as I want my dad to live, the last thing I want is for him to suffer the agony of end stage cancer. If this enemy attacts the lymphatic system, his bones, his brain or, most deadly, his bloodstream, I just don't want to watch the man that I love so much suffer. Suffer in a most horrific manner....

I'm prayerful that he'll beat this, however, I'm reminded of how tired he is, tired of fighting his heart problems, tired of being tired, and now, tired of this new offense on his body.