He Will Keep Fighting – our Cancer journey with Dad

This past Sunday started with an emergency trip to the ER via ambulance; my dad (who has stage 4 melanoma throughtout his body) was having severe headaches and yes, it turned out to be a brain bleed. We found out that he had a golf-ball size tumor on his cerebellum and multiple other lesions on his brain.

My sister, mom and I spent the whole day with him waiting for test after test and then he was finally admitted into the hospital. How exhausting this day was, physically and mentally. Every doctor that came in had a slightly different picture of dad’s prognosis and some tough decisions had to be made.

I am the youngest of 3 kids; I have an older brother Jeff, older sister Julie and then me! The 3 of us and my mom, talked to dad about what was going on and we had to make the decision whether with his prognosis, if surgery was worth it…really?! how do you help someone decide this?? Talk about a tough discussion, I didn’t even know what I thought. I work in the medical field and am familiar and comfortable with so much of what was happening and to put myself into a position to help my dad decide what he should do was TOUGH! He could have surgery and possibly have a  few, good months to live or he would pass away within days – he wanted to live and keep fightening and after prayer as a family and hearing that dad wasn’t ready to give up, he had the surgery Tuesday morning – a very successful surgery!

He is still in the hospital and will have some intense rehab, however we hope and will continue to pray for a full recovery and more time with dad!