A New Year At An Unforgettable Year

Sorry to know you had to experience the illness of a loved with whom you have shared your life with for such a long time. Hopefully you will be strengthen by the joy and good times you shared.

Ellyn Bache once said, “It’s normal to shy away from illness and death. It’s natural to gravitate toward laughter and life.” My dad has congestive heart failure, which is normally not considered a terminal disease, but his stage of failure is. He had his first heart attack when I was 8 years old. He was in and out of the hospital quite often. My dad had his second heart attack the summer after my 6th-grade year when I was twelve. He was in California, visiting his mother before she died. He had a heart attack and a stroke and was in the hospital for 52 days before we were able to go out to California and visit him. By the time we got there, almost all his bodily systems had shut down. He had frontal lobe brain damage, which made him unable to recognize my

I got the news that my aunt, Andrea, a close family member was diagnosed with cancer during the month of July, 2017. Andrea has faced many tough obstacles in her life. Her husband died from a heart attack at the age of 63. Her house was flooded and both of her dogs

He was released and had seemed to be doing good until he was rushed back in the following week for the same reason. My mom and I would go see him as often as we could and each time we realized he was getting worse. After a week or two in the hospital he was moved into hospice. At this point we were told it would not be long before he would no longer be with us. The last time we visited him at hospice was the time we knew within ourselves it was about time. Our last visit with him I will never forget. He wasn’t able to speak at all but he just kept looking around the room at us with a kind of look I still can’t describe. Leaving hospice that day we knew it wouldn’t be long but we also didnt realize how soon it would

         I don’t know what to tell you. I know your dad wouldn’t want us to go through all this financial and emotional chaos, but my hands are tied. You know his feelings. Only God will determine when he passes. If it were up to me, I’d treat him as compassionately as we did old Shep. I’d reset the drip rate on his morphine and help him out of his misery. I know that sounds cold, but there is no hope for recovery and he has no quality of life left—just the pain and misery.”

Let's start back when he started having his early stages of his complications. Something that he loved to do during the summer, was to take us camping at Joe Pool Lake for the weekend. Whenever we would go camping, he would also bring our pontoon boat with us to either go swim out on the lake, go tubing, or go fishing. This day was different though, he didn't seem like himself at all. Some of my mom's friends came out to the campsite, so we were all wanting to go out on the boat, and usually he is the first one to ask us if we want to go out on the lake, but he was nowhere to be found. My mom went into our camper, where he was laying down in bed, and asked "Do you want to take the boat out on to the lake with us?" He said "No, I'm not feeling good. My stomach hurts, but you all can take the keys and go." When he said this, we didn't think much about it because stomach aches and pains can be a normal thing that can come and go. Well little did we know, this was just the beginning of the most terrifying and tragic journey that we have gone through. We proceeded to take the boat,

My mom had to take my uncle Raymond to radiation every day for about 3 months, now she has to take him every three months, which affected her daily routine and how she planned her day. She also takes care of him a lot although he isn’t in the hospital or anything he isn’t very ill yet but from what I know I’m sure he will get sick. My uncle David was in his home when he passed away because he was on hospice, this effected everyone who lived in the house. When my uncle David passed away it was a very emotional time for the whole family, however it was kind of a happy moment as well because we knew he wasn’t suffering any more. My uncle David saw all his brothers and sisters before he passed some say that he was waiting to see them all before he said goodbye which could be true. Every person in a family who loses a family member has to deal with the emotional state of each other, some family members can handle death better than others so they are the strong ones in the situation. Cancer effects the whole family not just the patient.

Your grandfather is dying. He’s dying of cancer and slowly has been for the past decade. It began slowly, attacking his internal organs with seemingly little affect, then spread throughout his body. Watching him suffer every day is terrible, but knowing there is absolutely nothing that can be done to ease his pain makes it that much worse.

It was a typical day in the McDougal household; my sister was acclimating to college life, my annoying little brother was pushing my buttons, and my only worry was whether I was going to pass my next bio test. My dad was getting ready for a business trip to Singapore but decided to stop by the doctors for a quick checkup for his abdomen. Scans came back showing that the bump on his belly button was metastasized Stage IV Liver Cancer. I was completely devastated and couldn’t comprehend how my role model could have so much chaos inside of him. It took weeks before I could go a day without crying as I thought about my future without one of my biggest supporters. It seems for every glimmer of hope for a new treatment, a new, insurmountable brick wall appears when the scans show the treatment’s failure. As cliché as it sounds, every day truly is a rollercoaster; some days better than others. However, we slowly have adapted to this new reality and have truly understood that falling down is a part of life, but getting back up is living.

Summer of 2012, my grandfather was diagnosed with stage four Glioblastoma, and given only one year left to live. He had gone to have surgery earlier that week for the removal of his progressive tumor; his condition began to grow worse. The doctors got the tumor on the first try, but it was going to be a while before my grandfather felt back to normal. My family had many more trails and hardships to face in the near future.

His friend said he had nothing to worry about, most likely it was just a fatty tumor. As days went on he grew more and more exhausted and was not acting himself. After deciding to look into another doctor he found out the news, terminal stage 4 lung cancer had filled his whole chest cavity. The doctors seemed urgent and wanted to get a biopsy to look into the tumor more closely. He was rushed to the Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne and they told him immediately that the outcome was not going to be a positive one. With that news the whole family was crushed. Questions began to fill all of our heads. “How did this happen?” “What could I have done to prevent this?” These were all questions that we had, but couldn’t be

This was the diagnosis of stage four cancers that affected my mom and there was nothing that the doctors could do. The next question my dad had was, “How long?” The doctor said, “Less than ninety days,” due to the fact that the cancer had eaten its way through mom’s bladder. This is the most serious illness that I have had to deal with was truly hard on me and a lot more so on my dad; since he and mom would have been married more than thirty years.

Early 2016, my dad became very ill and it wasn't going away. He realized that going to the emergency room was his only option. My mom took him to the emergency room, and they transferred him to the Lovelace cancer center. They explained to him that he had stage 4 colon cancer and there was nothing more they could do. The doctor who told him the news told him that he would have 6 months to live after his colonoscopy had taken place. It had been more than 6

The impact that this tumor had on my family was huge, not only did it change my father’s life, but it also changed the families life. Considering

The New Year is upon us once again, ready or not. This holiday seems to me the one that provokes the most thought and reflection, which is a good thing really. We all need to assess where we are in our journey of life and make adjustments. For the Christian, this is especially important. Ephesians 5:1-2 reminds us to "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." The past year has been a great learning year for me in the area of relationships. I 've learned a lot about myself, others, and especially about how much God loves ME! Some of what I learned was very disappointing as I saw so much selfishness in relationships. I know that I am guilty of it too sometimes, but I just recognized it more, and saw the repercussions many times. Those consequences are painful and the effects are trickle-down. It has made me really think about Love a lot more and how Love as God intended it to be should be evident in our lives ALWAYS, and not just when it 's convenient for us. God spoke to me about His Love through my dog, Tracker. Yep, this is the Tracker story that I 've been meaning to put out there. This isn 't exactly how I thought I 'd convey it to everyone but as time has passed and I think about it even more, I know without a doubt that the truth that God impressed upon me that night is what is most important about the story. Tracker is an