wednesday

Wednesday was the last day that I had a conversation with my dad. I would never have imagined that, though. On Wednesday morning, Blake and I went to visit my dad. He was getting a CT scan that morning. When he came back from the test, he was so exhausted from not sleeping over night. I told him that I would let him rest, and I would come again in the evening. Blake gave him a high five. And we left. That's it. That was the last conversation we ever had.

Blake and I went home for naptime, and after that, we went to my mom's for dinner. TJ was in the midst of his very first progress reports (which is very time-consuming at his school). He was pretty stressed and had a lot of work to do, but he went with me to the hospital on Wednesday evening while we left Blake with Grandma.

When we got to the hospital, Dad was sleeping. I didn't want to wake him, so I left him a note that said I would visit again in the morning. But I didn't want to leave without any answers. I still didn't know what was wrong. So we waited for Dad's doctor to have time to talk to us. We watched Survivor while we waited. Dad's doctor came in after about half an hour of waiting. He got right to the point. The ugly "c word" was in his first sentence. I felt my heart drop, but I didn't cry. My brain was really busy concentrating on what the doctor was saying because there were so many technical words in the diagnosis. The doctor told us up front that even though they didn't know for sure what stage his cancer was in, it was most likely not treatable. He told us that we should have a family meeting sometime in the upcoming days about what Dad's plan would be in the event of being diagnosed with weeks or months to live. The message was clear: Dad was going to die and probably soon.

I don't remember what our conversation was like on the way home from the hospital, but I do remember that I had to drop TJ off at LCCS to finish his progress reports, so I drove the rest of the way home by myself. And I don't think I was crying yet, but I wanted to cry, and I wanted to talk to God about it, but yet I didn't because I was too angry. I felt angry, and I felt sad. And I felt scared. Because my dad is supposed to be the strong one for me, not the other way around. I was having a baby soon. How would I be able to, also, take care of my dad?

Taking care of Blake during that week was like an escape. You would think it would feel like such a burden amidst all the emotions, but it was, for me, a time to turn off my emotions and just go with the familiar motions of taking care of Blake. I picked him up at my mom's house that evening, and I told her what the doctor said. And I remember feeling like, why wasn't she reacting more? And then I had to call my brother and tell him, and I felt the same thing: why wasn't he reacting more? My world turned upside down, and I felt like screaming out a mixture of anger and sadness and fear.

I was expecting bad news like that my dad needed a transplant, as I mentioned in my previous post. I wasn't expecting to hear that he had terminal cancer. And one question that haunts my mind still is did they ever get a chance to tell my dad that he had cancer? And how did he feel in that moment? Remember, I spoke to my dad for the last time that morning, before results came in from his CT scan. We never got to have a conversation about his diagnosis. 

tuesday

Two weeks before my dad went to the hospital, he just had a cold. We all did. But ours went away after a few days, and we all started to feel better. But Dad didn't. I just thought that because he was older, it was taking him longer to get better.

He had been having a lot of nosebleeds that I was concerned about, and I told him to go to the doctor about it about a month before his death. But the doctor said she had no idea why his nose was bleeding so much.

In the week before he died, Dad wasn't getting out of bed. He had no appetite. Our fridge was full of uneaten food. I brought him glasses of water, but I don't know if he drank them or not. That's when I knew something was wrong. This was not normal. With the combined efforts of my uncle, aunt, and me, we convinced my dad to go to the doctor again. This doctor ran a few tests and sent him home. Dad went back to bed and said we had to wait until the next day when the blood test results came in. I was really scared; I was expecting it to be something serious, but not immediately life threatening. Dad and I actually argued that morning (Tuesday) because he said that his appointment was at 11, but I KNEW that the receptionist said 10. We argued about it for a few minutes, and he called back and found that I was right. Dad was loopy though. He couldn't think straight.

The doctor called us about 6 PM that evening. We were just sitting down to have dinner, and she said that Dad's blood test results hadn't come in yet, but the tests that had come through were all wrong. His liver enzymes and his blood counts were all off. It was actually nothing new for Dad's blood cell count to be off. Several years prior, he had gone to several specialists because his white blood cell count was low. They couldn't find anything wrong with him at the time. But this time, doc said we had better take him to the ER. So I finished my dinner and, then, knocked on Dad's door to tell him to get ready. He whined like a toddler,

"Right noooow?! Whyyyy?!"
"Well, Dad, we can either go tonight, or we can wait until tomorrow. Either way, we are going, and we might as well go tonight so maybe you can feel better sooner."

He gave in, and we dropped off Blake at my aunt's house and headed to LGH. Dad was really dizzy. When they showed him his information on his bracelet, Quang M. Bui, he said that the W is supposed to be an M. He also kept standing up whenever they called a number because he thought it was our number. It wasn't even close. They would call 33, but our number was 102. Something like that.

Once we got called back, Dad kept asking how long he would be there because he was worried about Blake and TJ getting home because he had to work the next day. I really wanted to stay until they admitted him, but we had no idea how long it would be, The ER doc told me that it looked like liver disease, which is what we were expecting it to be. As shocking as it all should have been to hear that my dad might have liver disease, I wasn't all that surprised because my dad had been a heavy drinker for quite some time. And like I said earlier, I was expecting it to be a semi-serious issue.

I was not too emotional about everything because I was in problem solving mode. Everything was reactionary to me, and I just kept thinking what do I need to do next? But the one thing I did get emotional about was the fact that I couldn't donate my liver to my dad because I was pregnant. You see, I was assuming that the next day, we would go to the hospital to visit my dad and hear that he would need a transplant. That's the serious news I was expecting to hear. And I was expecting that it would be fixable. It was really hard for me to think that, perhaps, my liver was compatible, but my pregnancy prevented my donation.

I went home that night expecting that I would wake up in the morning and visit Dad and hear how many days they would want to keep him in the hospital. That's what we all expected.