[NY65912]

I don’t post here on the OT too much. But I have read stories from other members of watching a loved one at the end of life. I have been there 3 times before. My Mom and MIL die a painful death from cancer. My FIL pass from kidney failure.
Now once again I am watching a loved one slowly leave this life,, my Dad. Dad is 94 years old. He has been in decline for a few years. He has congestive heart disease and it progressed slowly but really showed its effect in the past year.

Pop fell on his 94th birthday. He got a nice contusion on his forehead and abraded his arm to raw meat. He had to get a transfusion in order to get it to heal.
He was able to come home (lives with sis and BIL). We got him a nurse for 8 hr a day but, he slowly declined in a general way. I would say a very mild case of dementia.

Last week he called and was in a tremendous amount of pain, so in to the hospital he went.

He needed 4 blood transfusions to get his numbers up, he improved a bit. Then all of a sudden he was becoming more difficult to understand, occasionally babbling a not making sense. This has progressed to where he is now incoherent most of the time. On Sat the doc’s said that he had a fracture in the L4 vertebrae that did not show up in the original MRI he had after the fall in September. They also break the news that he has a touch of pneumonia. Sunday we were told that his whit count was very low and the hematologist wanted to give him and injection that would boost his count and it would really make a difference, not so.

I just came back from the hospital; and he is now incoherent. I had to speak to him in his native tongue of Italian to get him to drink a little apple juice. The doc’s just say he is slowly shutting down. I also found out today that his PSA is 52! He had prostate cancer when he was 71 and supposedly beat it with radiation.

Dad was one of the strongest men I have ever met. He was a Bersaglieri during WWII in the Italian army. He escaped being captured by the Germans when the change happened and went on to fight the Germans. He came to the US in 1950, met my Mom and married. He came from a wealth family in Italy that owned olive groves and an olive oil pressing factory. He came here at the prodding of my grandfather who came to the US in 1907 and became a US citizen and enlisted in the US army in WWI and loved this country so much he wanted his son to see it and return home to run the business but he was struck by cupid’s arrow and only returned to visit.

Now, all my memories as a child and young man are rushing through my head, remembering more and more while I watch him wait for death to come.

My sister and I told him to go to Mom, go find Mom.

I pray it comes swiftly and quietly.

So, if I have never commented on your posts of similar nature or suffering of a loved one I apologize but I find it difficult.