I just don’t know how else to put it. Rather than rewrite the sordid tale out again, I’m going to copy-paste an email to a friend I wrote this morning.
Stephen’s father went into the hospital three weeks ago with what
they thought was a gallstone. They spent a few days stabilizing him
– he had not eaten much of anything in nearly a month. When they did
the “camera down the throat” they discovered that he had a ginormous
tumor wrapped around the ducts between his liver and stomach. Very
bad news. So John went through pretty major surgery – 10 hours, I
think it was – two days later. The surgery went GREAT, but they had
to do a lot of bypasses where they had to remove vascular
infrastructure running through the tumor. He was recovering well.
We scheduled for Stephen to go home around the same time his dad got
out of the hospital, so he could help out while John (his dad) was
convalescing. Last week, they told us the tumor was not cancerous
and John wouldn’t have to do chemo at all. He was recovering VERY
well – things were looking up. Then yesterday morning, when we were
scurrying around getting ready to put Stephen on a plane out for his
several weeks of helping out, we got the call. His father had
started bleeding internally, and they rushed him into surgery. En
route to surgery, John had a heart attack and couldn’t be revived.Stephen got on the flight to Dallas we already had scheduled.
Stephen’s brother is in Iraq, and it takes time to get back to the
States. The services will be on the 23rd, so I’m heading out on
Wednesday and I’ll stay for several days after the services so that I
can be there for his mom when everyone else leaves. We’re pretty close.
Basically, I’m wiped out. Totally. I’m also fighting the Linden phage (not quite Linden plague, but still no fun). I’m having my tea Yang Wen-li style tonight — tea and milk and honey and LOTS of brandy. Maybe that’ll thwart the phage… or at least take some of the ick out of it.