Day 39

I didn't sleep all that well again last night. Was up early listening to Howard and lying in bed. It is just crazy to think about what I was doing at this time last year. Again, its a place I don't ever want to go back to, physically or mentally. The Cleveland Clinic may be one f the best hospitals in the country, but it makes me sick. I feel like I need to put this down in writing to get it off my chest as this is something that I never really discussed outside of my mother, Matt, and Leah.

The situation at the Clinic just gave me the creeps. Dad was on the VIP floor, where worldwide dignitaries, actors, and athletes came for their surgeries. Everyone was able to get their own room there. Per Dad's request, nobody other than family would be allowed to even see him. Nobody. He was tired, he was weak, and he was hooked up to the chemo machines 24 hours a day. The bags had to be changed every 12 hours. They came in to check his vitals it seemed incessantly to me throughout the day. Once a day, dad had to get up and walk literally all the way across the hospital, per doctors request to get some energy going, and get his radiation treatments done. Everyday, he had the same appointment. And everyday that you went in there, you would see the same people awaiting their appointments. I'll never forget one man who we'd see in there everyday. He was wheelchair-bound, had a feeding tube in his nose, was bald from the chemo, and looked like he weighed 100 pounds. I couldn't even look in his direction. I just felt so sorry for him. Another man we saw everyday had burns so bad on his face, he looked like he had been permanently subjected to a wind storm. It was from the radiation. It burns your skin so badly sometimes that this is a side effect that eventually goes away. Mom, Matt, and I would sit there for 15-20 minutes, wait for the treatment to end, and then walk dad back across the hospital to his room.

As we got further into the treatments - at this week last year - dad was going to have to be fed through a tube because he couldn't swallow anything due to what the radiation and chemo was doing to his throat. My mom fed him Boost, an nutritional drink via a large syringe a few times a day. He could only take so much of it and he threw it up quite a bit. It was just heartbreaking. The rest of the time spent was Dad sleeping while watching TV. He just didn't talk. We printed out sports articles from the Internet, gave him the newspaper, magazines, etc. But he would end up reading for a while, and then falling asleep. I even went as far as reading him some of the articles to help him. One thing that will always stick with me was that Dad began to watch the Travel channel almost all day long. Even now, thinking of it, I am welling up. He was never one to watch this channel, but he did it for a reason. He whispered to me that he wanted to see all of the beauty of the vacation spots they talked about because after he beat cancer, he was going to see all of them in person. That was dad in a nutshell. The man was suffering, he was a shell of himself, yet he still stayed positive through it all. He was going to get out of there and live his life how he always had lived it - to the fullest.

The Sun would go down, Mom would feed him again, we would watch the 6 O'clock news and visiting hours would be over. Leaving the Clinic everyday was gut wrenching. I cried after every visit. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. What we were going through was unbelievably hard, but more so for my father. How there hasn't been a cure for cancer yet, I will never understand, but we need to keep donating and keep fighting to rid the world of this horrible disease.

Song of the Day: In honor of my dad being the man who gave shots in the Army, like he used to say in the "upper outer quadrant" of the butt. "Doctor Robert" by The Beatles.