This past Friday my father passed away. Just 11 days ago he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, before the diagnosis he was in relatively good health, and just 59 years old. The Dr. gave him 4-6 months to live without chemo therapy, and 1 year to live with Chemo therapy. He chose to have chemo to extend his time with us, despite the side effects of chemo like nausea, fatigue, etc. His first chemo session was just on Tuesday. The nausea didn't start until Thursday, on Friday morning he had my mother take him to the hospital chemo center. He went through 2 bags of fluid and gave him medication from the hiccups he was suffering from. He was there about 5 hours Friday morning, and was sent home.
When he got home he couldn't get comfortable anywhere in the house. In the evening he said he felt like he was hyper ventilating, and started feeling nausea again. He wandered to his bedroom and we heard him vomiting in the toilet like he had been doing over the last few days. Then I got a feeling that I should go check on him. When I walked into the bedroom I could hear the sound of liquid hitting the floor, but the room was dark. I saw my father slumped over but sitting on the bed. Head down and black matter pouring out his mouth, he was unconcious. The trash can he used to puke in was 1/3 full of this black matter. I yelled for my mom to come. My dad was unresponsive, I layed him down on the bed. The 911 operator told my mom that we had to put him on the floor to give CPR. He had no pulse we could detect. (I have no formal training in CPR, I just heard instructions from 911 tape replays on what to do)
I picked up his body off the bed and put him on the ground. And began giving him chest compressions, after a hundred or so I pinched his nose and breathed into his mouth, and more black fluid came out, and no response from him. I went back to giving him chest compressions until the fire dept arrived 5-10 minutes later and took over.
After 30 minutes they were able to get his heart going again, and took him to the hospital.
At the hospital after the Dr. examined him he told us after consulting with another Dr that there was a 1 in 1000 chance that if my dad came home he would not have brain function. The Dr asked us to make a choice, they do everything to keep him alive, blood transfusions etc. Or they do nothing and we pull him off the respirator. We made the choice to remove him from the respirator. We walked into his room where he was lying and said our goodbyes.
Now I found myself replaying the gruesome images in my head of how I found him and his lifeless body with the blood everywhere. I only slept 2 hours the first night, but did sleep about 10 hours last night.
I will seek counseling when I return to California.
But I was wondering what if any other complementary things I could do, possibly physically. (Thats why I posted this in an RMAX forum.) To help me deal or hopefully get over the PTSD. I remember Scott Sonnon talk about a technique he and Steve Barnes were working on for people to get over fears, or something. Not sure if that technique is applicable in this situation.
Isaac Boucher
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