I woke up with a hangover. It was a Saturday and I’d been out the night before with my one of my oldest, dearest friends. Her father had been sick and we were catching up as only old friends can, especially as it relates to parents who aren’t technically your own but you’ve known them since you were 14 so they feel like your parents. I told her how my Dad had been acting strange all week and I’d felt like he was sick for the last few months. It was February and his weight loss over the holidays was one of many signs something was wrong. I still think back to how I said what had been swirling in my head for months out loud and it’s like I spoke it into truth.

I got up out of bed and before I got any coffee my phone was ringing. It was my Mom.

“Jen, I’m sorry to call so early but Daddy isn’t acting right.” She started to cry. “The nurses at the hospital called to check on him and one of them came over last night to bring us dinner and take his blood pressure. She thinks he’s dehydrated but he won’t listen to me and I don’t know what do.”

Now is a good time to let you know that my Dad had been a volunteer at the hospital near their house for several years and the nurses he worked with were basically his best friends. He loved those gals and they loved him.

She called so early because he was at his little side job at the grocery store and he had warned her not to call me so she had to do it in secret. He was “fine” in his opinion but I’d noticed how he’d been quiet all week. I thought he was just in a bad mood but it didn’t matter the reason, it wasn’t like him.

“Can you come up here? He won’t let me take him to the hospital.”

As an only child, and one who is super close with her parents, there is no response other than “Yes, let me change and I’ll be on my way.” Before I left I talked with the nurse who had stopped by to check on my parents the night before. Her name is Stephanie and she’s an angel.  She seemed to think my Dad was simply dehydrated as he’d had a colonoscopy a few days prior and old people get dehydrated frequently (this will be a frequent theme, btw).

By the time I got up to their house 38 miles away, Dad was home and answered the door.

Limping and sort of sliding his foot. With his hair all over the place. Not seeming to be able to really focus.

“Oh look who’s here! Hi, sweetheart!”

We went into the family room where he sat down in his recliner. I readied myself for the fight.

“Dad, Mom called me and told me to come here because you’re not well and you need to go to the hospital.”

He sat up and threw the TV remote into the chair, visibly pissed.

“I’m fine!”

“Dad, you know you’re not fine. I know you know you’re not fine. Look at you! You’re limping!”

“JEN I AM FINE!”

“NO YOU ARE NOT! You have two choices: you can let me take you in my car to the emergency room or I’m going to call 911 and have an ambulance come and it will be a dramatic affair for all the neighbors to see. Your choice.”

He looked down. He knew defeat was imminent but he had to try one more time.

More gently now, “Jen, I am fine.”

Other Daddy’s Girls will know that what I said next is the equivalent of a Mike Tyson punch to the jaw, but time was of the essence.

“Daddy, if you love me you’ll let me take you to the hospital.”

RIGHT HOOK TO THE JAW. His eyes said it all – he knew he couldn’t refuse me now.

“Ok. Fine.”

When we got to the emergency room my initial thought was that he’d had a stroke. While he filled out his paperwork (struggling to write his name) I mouthed to the people working the counter, “stroke” and made a face that indicated I wasn’t sure what was wrong  but knew it was serious. I also knew that they’d take him back immediately if they thought he was having a stroke.

He answered their questions but he was almost timid with his speech. His sentences were short. He made not a single joke, and my father was a jokester. One nurse said, “I asked him who the President was and he said ‘Barack Obama’ and that’s correct.” My response back was, “Yes, but if you knew my Dad you’d know his answer should be, ‘that idiot Barack Obama.'” (Side note: he said that about all Presidents, Barack was in very good company.)

I got the sense the staff was doubting me and my view that he was very sick; I was getting pissy about it, too. They took him for a CT Scan and a nurse practitioner came into the room and closed the door. “I don’t know your Dad well, but I do know him from his volunteering here at the hospital,” he said. “I agree with you that he’s altered, something isn’t right, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

They brought Dad back in to the room. A doctor came in maybe 20 minutes later and when she closed the door she did the sad head-nod that all doctors do when they are about to deliver bad news. He hadn’t had a stroke but there were spots on his brain which was causing the confusion, the impaired movement, the odd speech. She said it normally indicated a cancer that had spread from somewhere else so they need to do some chest X-rays.
“Do you smoke, Mr. Schrober?”

“Uh, yeah.”

I knew what she was getting at. They took Dad back for X-rays and I braced myself for what was coming. It was clear it was cancer, but what kind? I’d like to say I prayed but I didn’t. I just sat there, trying to figure out what to say to my Mom who was still waiting at home.

They brought Dad back. I waited with him. He didn’t say much, he couldn’t. It’s like the spots on his brain had clung to whatever pieces connect to help you talk. A new doctor came in. The on-call oncologist. That’s a cancer doctor. If someone refers you or someone you know to an oncologist, it’s because they think you have cancer.

“Mr. Schrober, what did you do for work? Did you work near radioactive material?”

My Dad just blinked at him. “No.”

The doctor asked what he did for a living. I answered that he worked for GE in an office for 30 years. No nuclear material around. (WTF?  Talk about a random first question!)

“Did you smoke?”

Yes. He did. He still did. He had for most of his life. The doctor asked how long. Did it matter? His generation started smoking at like 12 years old. He was 72 years old. (Any doctors reading this, don’t ask that question of an elderly person with stage IV lung cancer. What does it matter now? How stupid.)

“Mr. Schrober, your X-ray shows a spot on your lung that is consistent with lung cancer. We’ll need to keep you and admit you so we can run more tests and be certain.”

Dad put up a fight. He wanted to go home. I told him no, he was staying. I told the doctor he was staying. And so that was that, he was being admitted.

I texted my husband, he had asked me to call him. His first thought was my Mom – who was going to tell her and how? I couldn’t tell her via phone while she was by herself. We came up with a plan to get her to the hospital by telling her they were admitting him while they did more tests and I needed her to bring his PJs and overnight essentials. She went with it.

By the time she got there they had taken Dad back for another CT scan, this time of his body. I took her an unused area of the ER that had some chairs and sat her down.

“So Daddy has spots on his brain, that is what has caused the loss of speech and his odd behavior. They said it’s normally a sign of cancer that has spread from somewhere else, so they did X-rays and he has a tumor in his lung.”

She just stared at me. No tears. Just big eyes.

“They think he has lung cancer. They are going to admit him and do more tests.”

We went back to his room and he was waiting for us. Mom kissed him and told him she brought him his stuff from home so that made him relax a little. He stayed there for the next eight days. It was the start of a twenty month-long roller coaster that taught me more about myself, my family, my friends and life than I could have ever imagined. And while this doesn’t have a happy ending, I hope that the rest of this story helps others feel less lonely in similar situations.