It's been 11 days now since the cruel disease has taken away my Dad. I am 26 years old and i have lost my Dad , 57 to this evil disease.

On November 29th Dad was diagnosed with Oesophageal Cancer after having difficulty swallowing. The doctors offered him Chemo treatment which would last about 6 months to shrink the tumour. When Mum told all of us we were all very positive as we know that Dad was a clever man and had great fighting spirit. He had his first round of Chemo on 3rd Jan and felt very positive and much better after it. When he was due to go to his 2nd Chemo treatment he was told his blood count was low, therefore had to have a blood transfusion instead of the Chemo. After his blood transfusion he seemed to feel much worse, spending his days in bed , having no energy and feeling very unwell. On Thursday 9th Feb my mum took him into his routine meeting with the consultant. He walked into the hospital and fainted as he came out of the lift. He was taken to the Oncology Day Unit and was given a bed whilst they waited for the doctor. He was in this room for over 5 hours without any fluids or any sign of a doctor. He fainted again whilst in this room and then was taken to the Oncology Department on a ward. Me and mum stayed with him until about 10pm to let him get some sleep and to come back in the morning. 

My mum recieved a call at 6am on Friday 10th Feb saying that Dad had sufferred a major bleed that night and had to be ressucitated. We were all told that the tumour had a catastrophic bleed and he lost an enormous amount of blood. He spent two weeks on the Oncology Ward with various other CT scans, blood tests, observations. On Valentines Day the doctor got all of us together ( he had 4 kids) and told us they were not going to continue anymore treatment and that the Chemo is not working.- I will never have Valentines Day again.

On Thursday 23rd of Feb he was discharged on to come home on Pallative Care. He was on various pain releif and medication so was quite sleepy most days, but we managed to get glimpses of him now and then. His condition deteriorated on Tuesday 28th Feb and no longer felt like eating and became more and more confused. He developed a rattling chest so we called the nurse out and she gave him something to stop the secretions. 

On Wednesday 1st March ( St Davids Day) my dear dear Dad passed away with mum lying next to him telling him how much we all loved him.

I just cannot get my head around why it was him that had to go, he was too young, he will never see his grandchildren and will never walk me down the ailse. He was a talented man , an artist and illustrator , he had so much more to give. His life was so cruely taken away from him and we had no time. Many of the stories i have read on here are about older people, by no means does that make it easier. I just need to make sense of why my Dad? Why this young? I too find it really difficult to talk to any of my friends or my boyfriend about any of this as they are each lucky enough to have both their parents and most of them still their grandparents and this makes me even angrier.

i am sorry for all you ladies that have lost your beloved mothers , my sister posted something on Facebook earlier which I thought I would share with you ...

A beautiful perspective

I was directed to this by someone and thought it was good. It's written by someone called Snow....

"Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."