Melrick

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They have support services like that here as well, but I'm more of a "bottle it up until it explodes" kind of person; I prefer not to talk about what's troubling me. And mum is the sort of person who wouldn't like those kind of services either. She's got us and we'll do all we can. I'm not going anywhere. It still doesn't seem real, though. I can't help feeling a tad guilty about leaving him at the hospital (until the funeral can be arranged). I feel like I should be visiting him, like we've just abandoned him. Weird, and unsettling...

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Thanks, I appreciate it.

Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts. It still doesn't seem real, for some reason. I mean, he's always been around! Apollo, I'll keep doing this for now. A bit of normality is nice.

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Thanks for your kind words. You definitely understand how it is then. When he was first diagnosed, a nurse said to me, "If someone offered me a billion dollars or a cure for cancer, I'd take the cure". To be perfectly honest, if you'd asked me that question before dad had been diagnosed, I'd take the money. But now, I wouldn't even hesitate. Cancer is just an insidious, awful disease.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for nurses. Doctors are a different story, but nurses... my hats off to them. They work damn hard for little money, and the vast majority of them do it with a smile. A palliative care nurse came out to our house yesterday to give us some assistance. She could see how much we were struggling, physically and emotionally. Dad also took another fall while she was here and hurt his arm, which she bandaged up. She came back today to check on him, and to ask us if we really would prefer him to be in hospital, permanently this time. We agreed. So we called the ambulance and they took him to hospital. Mum and I followed in my car. Half an hour later, my dad suddenly started coughing up blood. Then vomiting blood. A lot of blood. The doctors came, pulled the curtain around him and ushered us out. They took us to the family room where a doctor soon after came to tell us that he obviously had had a major bleed and he'd gone into cardiac arrest. So that's it. Just like that. Fuck, I didn't expect it to be so sudden. I never got to say goodbye. From seemingly okay (as okay as he has been) to dead in less than a minute. Even the nurse who was looking after him was shocked and upset. So now a lot of phone calls need to be made, not to mention nearly $3000 for a budget funeral. Being on a pension, that's a shit load of money. I'm glad dad never new how much money I was going to have to spend on a funeral. He'd have been horrified. I fucking hate cancer, with a passion.

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