No surgery

We just came from a family meeting and decided not to do surgery on the tumor. The doctor said it was so large he would not be able to get it all and on what was left, we would have to do radiation/chemo. Even on a healthy person, the aggressiveness of the tumor would allow the patient to live less than 1 year. Since dad is not very healthy, it would be even less than that. We know he would not want to live with the pain of radiation/chemo.

Mom is talking with hospice people tomorrow morning to determine when he can come home and live out his days there.

Dad has lived a long, wonderful life, and has touched so many people. I know he and mom would appreciate any visitors as soon as he is settled at home.

We will keep you posted.

Cancer

We talked with the doctor today about dad's MRI. He has a tumor 7 cm big, just smaller than a tennis ball. The Dr. believes his original stroke in 2009 was caused by this tumor that bled. Because of the bleeding, they did not see the tumor then. They are 99.9% sure the tumor is malignant. They won't know 100% without a biopsy.

He is comfortable and sometimes coherant. We love him so much!

Still waiting...

We are still waiting for them to do the MRI. He won't stop vomiting, so they can't do it yet. They hope to do it tonight and will have the results tomorrow morning. They are kicking us out now, so we'll resume in the morning.

Thanks to everyone for your well-wishes and prayers.

Dad in the hospital once again :(

Yesterday afternoon about 3:30 pm, Dad was walking with his walker from the living room to the kitchen when he fell and hit his head on the wall. Mom had a neighbor come help her get him up. She called the Dr. and he said to watch for symptoms of concusion and so forth. She watched all night, but nothing showed up. This morning, as they were getting ready for church, Dad was very pale, very sleepy, he wouldn't respond to Mom except to say "OK" to everything she said. She knew something was wrong so she called the ambulance. As they were preparing him, he started throwing up. This was approx 11:00 am.

Mom called us kids and we headed down to the hospital. When we got here, we were told that he had had a stroke. We tried to talk to him, but he couldn't really talk, but knew we were there. After a little while, the Dr. said he was looking at the cat scan and didn't think it was a stroke, but something else. He wouldn't tell us what. He received a blessing. He was scheduled for an MRI and transfered from the ER to ICU.

After further looking at the x-rays, the Dr. said that it actually looked like a tumor, but wouldn't know for sure until the MRI was done either tonight or tomorrow.