My Dad's Journey

Life is an interesting journey. You are born, you walk through life, and then you journey to death. I have seen that in my father.

Dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma cancer six years ago. Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow. It's very painful and it destroys the bones. He began this journey with pain and fear. Because of his battle with this disease, many of the things he loved were taken away from him. He had to give up his medical for flying and sell his airplane. Little by little, he had to give up driving. His love for wood working became too difficult and painful. An unfinished project still sits in his garage. He eventually had to give up going for walks because of the pain and fatigue. And sadly, he had to give up going flying with his two dearest friends to breakfast in Payson. They were known as The Three Muskateers.

The walk with cancer and heart disease took him to many doctors who all wanted to treat only their narrow specialty, and thus my dad was fragmented. In stead of looking at him as a whole person, he was seen as a heart, as cancer, as a bladder, as a broken back. One doctor wanted him on coumadin, one wanted him off it. One would give him a pain treatment regimin, another would change it, and still another would change it yet again. All the while, he had chronic pain.

I don't think I ever actually heard my dad complain. When I would ask him how he was doing, he would always answer, "Just great!" He would only be completely honest when I would press.

Now my dad sits in a hospice facility waiting to die. The cancer has spread to all of his bones and probably his brain. He barely eats enough to sustain life, he is restless and anxious. He is incoherent and unable to hold a conversation. Not that my dad was ever a man of many words. He is confused, but still staunchly hangs on. He is now on a journey that only he can make alone. Just he and his Savior. So my prayer for him is that in his slumber, God would reach out His hand to my dad, and he would take it.