Vacation For Our Father With Cancer

This is our daddy. When the whole family lived together he was a 220 pound hot tar roofer, hauling shingles up and down ladders all day. He used to pick me and my sister up - one in each arm and carry us around the house as if we were feather light. Him and mom would lift us up with their feet on our bellies, holding our hands so that we could pretend we were flying angels. He practiced softball with us, taught us how to make the perfect sandwich (with nothing sticking off the edge of the bread of course), and watched wrestling with us on the regular. We even got so into it with him that he bought us talking wrestling figurines home one day after work - Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan - our favorites. Not only that but we consistently and without fail would jump up and down on the bed yelling "Clothes line me, Daddy!" for a good hour before we gave up playing wrestling to watch it on tv. He once brought home a case of Budweiser stickers from a factory he had been working on so instead of wearing Mommy's shoes around the house, my sister and our neighbors covered our feet in stickers and pretended they were the most elegant shoes.

Our dad loved to make breakfast - it was his favorite part of the day. You can't live in New Jersey without knowing how to make a proper pork roll egg and cheese. I remember Daddy always wanting breakfast at any time of day and it's the main reason I'd wanted to open a small diner sometime in my future. Daddy always told me he would love to stop everything and just own a breakfast place and cook eggs all day. Now we're not allowed to visit him without bringing pork roll :)

He lives up in the middle of Pennsylvania now with his amazing sister Jill, her husband Bill, and two kids Laura and Amanda. They are doing their best to take care of him, and we could never thank them enough for that. After his divorce from mom, things got really difficult for him and he just wasn't the same person any more. He had lost a piece of himself and what he thought his life was no longer. His kids had gone away to school and he was alone, so Jill graciously offered to take him from his new hell and give him a new start. He had been through enough for any one person and deserved to get happier and healthier. Unfortunately, things don't always turn out as we hope.

Dad, Don, I guess you should know what his name is - has stage 4 rectal cancer that has metastasized to the liver. The first time he went to the doctor for his pain, it was already too late to do much, but the doctors gave us hope - as is I guess they're supposed to. So they started him on chemo hoping to shrink down the tumor at the end of his intestine enough to operate to remove it. We thought the chemo was doing it's job. Daddy barely had any side effects except for a bit of finger tip and mouth numbness. He bought himself an economy pack of lysol wipes for any mishaps and had buckets everywhere just in case. It really seemed like he was facing this head on and was ready to beat it into submission. He told me once when I went up to visit him that "Nothing is going to kill me. I'm not ready to go yet and I won't let it happen".

He continued to work as much as possible. He would have to take a few days off directly after treatments, but he still usually worked every day to help out around the house and probably to keep everyone from worrying too much.

By the end of his first round of treatments he had dropped down to 180 pounds. He didn't look sickly, but he also didn't look like the bull we remembered as Daddy. The doctors told him the chemo only shrank the tumor by a centimeter and didn't have any effect on either of the two spots on his liver. They started him on a second round of chemo which he is currently going through now - he is about half way through and it's the strongest treatment available. After this, there are no more options. Currently, Daddy weighs a skeletal 145 pounds. He has no muscle left, he has no fat left, he cannot eat or he will just throw it up. He can barely move himself as far as it is from the couch to the kitchen without exhausting himself. He doesn't work much anymore, and he sleeps for about 16-20 hours a day. On our last visit to see him, out of the four days we spent there, we saw him for maybe 3 hours total. Despite all of his favorite foods we made him (including pork roll of course) he only ate a tiny sliver of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. This new treatment, plus the ever strengthening cancer is very rapidly taking our father from us.

Daddy is cold all of the time now. He doesn't smile or joke, he doesn't leave the house unless it is to go to the doctor or if he feels well enough to make it to work, which is almost never at this point. We have never been a well to do family and haven't been on many - if any - vacations that weren't sponsored by softball or girl scouts. Daddy never liked the beach, but we really want nothing more than to be able to give him one nice warm vacation for him to think about on the days when he's feeling down. So despite this long story, our goal here is just to send Daddy some where where he can go outside and sit in the sun and enjoy the day without having to wear a knit hat, several pants, socks and jackets. We're thinking Florida as it would have to be soon that we would have to take him. We're not sure that he will be able to hold out until the Jersey Shore is warm enough. Every day we wish we were closer to him to see him and take care of him, or even just to listen to him when he needed someone to talk to. He has amazing family surrounding him, but he is our Dad. We need him in our lives and it terrifies us to think that We're completely helpless to do anything for him. So if you can find it in your heart to donate, we're not asking for medical bill help, we're simply asking to be able to afford to take Daddy to a place of no worries - even if it's only for a short time. No one is perfect, but everyone deserves a chance to smile. Please help us make this happen for him. Share with your family and friends. We want to give back to the father that gave us everything he had in him.

Thank you guys, and I hope that you are fortunate enough to never have to endure this. No one should be forced to watch someone they love lose their life.