the first winter

The fall after my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer I started the third grade, which I was looking forward to because I was excited to be getting back to school and spending time with my friends, and I'm pretty sure my parents were looking forward to me going back to school so they wouldn't have to look for someplace for me to go when they went to Terre Haute for my dad's chemotherapy and radiation treatments. My grandparents on my mom’s side managed the kennel while my mom was busy taking my dad to his chemo and radiation treatments. Through all this my mom still managed to be there for me with all the stuff that was going on, she helped me with my homework when I needed it and talked to me when I had questions about what was going on with my dad. I appreciated everything my mom did, but I realize now, not as much as I should have.

The winter after my dad was diagnosed he began having chest pains, at first we thought he was having a heart attack which would normally be a scary thing for anybody, but for us it was amazingly frightening, and none of us knew what to do, so we called 911, then my sister. We all waited at my house for the ambulance to arrive, but it was taking forever. We finally called after twenty minutes and cancelled the ambulance; my sister decided it would be faster if she just took my dad to the hospital herself. We waited in Emergency Room waiting room for a doctor to tell us what they had found in the multiple tests they had performed on my dad, the X-ray was the most telling of all the tests. It showed fluid in my dad’s lungs, which meant he had pneumonia, which almost always super- severe in people on chemo therapy because they have a weaker immune system with fewer white blood cells. The doctor’s decided to keep my dad overnight in the hospital to monitor his chest pain and just keep an eye on him. They put him an antibiotic regimen that included antibiotics through an IV while he was in the hospital and some pills while he was still in the hospital and when he went home. My dad spent the first night in the hospital without any complications, but he stayed another night due to the fact he was a cancer patient in the midst of an extremely aggressive, but dangerous chemo regimen, which he handled very well. This episode scared my entire family; we all thought we were losing my dad to a heart attack after all he had already been through, which we could not believe, even though it was just for a while, I think this experience drew us all closer to one another and helped strengthen my dad’s resolve to beat cancer, which was already pretty strong. My dad ended up getting out of the hospital three days later, and had to take an antibiotic for a few days afterward.