April 25, 2007
My Dad went into surgery for "benign" (as determined by needle core biopsy) tumors in his pancreas.
I went down to be with him and my family that day. It was a Wednesday and my plan was that I would talk to him that night when he woke up from the surgery, I'd be back at work on Thursday and Friday, and go back down again for the weekend. In that way, I could save my leave time for the recovery.
My family and I waited all day in the waiting room while he went through the Whipple Procedure, a risky operation that removes a lot of the digestive system along with damaged parts of the pancreas.
Around 3:00 we got a call that the pancreas was not in good condition at all. In fact, it was riddled with cancer. They couldn't complete the procedure as planned because they were getting too close to arteries in their attempt to clean it up, so they would just finish up as it was.
I think it was around 5:00 that we sat in the small discussion room with the doctor, as he explained over and over that we just need to take it one day at a time from here on out and we kept asking the same questions, which basically came down to "what??"
"How much time does he have?"
"Well, we can't answer that question"
I didn't get to talk to my Dad that night, or the next day.
On the day before, my Dad sent out an email and said "I will probably be in ICU for a day or two and then in the regular hospital for another week to 10 days." Actually, he didn't even wake up from the surgery for 11 days, and he only left ICU when all medical hope was lost and he came home to be in hospice care.
The answer to the big question was: about two and a half months.