I have to admit, leaving my dad at the hospital was a huge sigh of relief. My whole life I have known him to be strong and very healthy, in fact one of the big jokes in our family is how he never even catches a cold. So to see him this weak and in so much pain really scared me and left me feeling very helpless. Surely the hospital would help this time – provided he doesn’t go and check himself out against medical advice again.
Mom and I decided to head over to visit him in the afternoon to spend some time. I was going to watch the Gators play as the started their quest for the National Championship title. This is something my dad and I exclusively share, our love for Gator sports. (My mom is always yelling “Turn the TV down! You aren’t actually at the game.”) I graduated from the University of Florida and if you don’t come out of those four (or in my case, four and a half) years basically bleeding orange and blue you haven’t lived your full college experience.
I brought Daddy a tuna sandwich, some chips and some homemade chocolate chip cookies. He had been complaining about hospital food saying it all tastes like plastic. I don’t know if this was more of an excuse because he was not hungry or if it was true. Taking a look at the sad scoop of tuna salad that he had on his tray when I came in I tend to think it was more of the latter.
He seemed in decent spirits as we watched the Gators play in the SEC Championship. There wasn’t much talking, more just hanging around with him. He did mention the oncologist he had an appointment with later in the week, Dr. K, had stopped by. So that, along with what his GP said yesterday before he was checked in gave us a bit of a clearer picture.
My father is diagnosed with Stage 3-3B Squamous Cell Carcinoma. He has a bit of pneumonia and is dehydrated as well. IVs are in and all we can do at this point is hope the antibiotics clear the cold and we can deal with the bigger issue behind it. He has different doctor visits scheduled all week, culminating with a PET Scan to see if its spread (my new vocab word is metastasized) so I hope that he can rest and gain some strength for what’s to come.
I wonder if he knows how bad this actually might be but am afraid to ask. I don’t want him freaking out any more than my mom, sister and myself are doing. He doesn’t research things on the internet – we do, which can be a good or really really bad thing. It’s all we can do to not future trip right now but the wait for tests and information is a whole new stress all its own beast.
The Gators live on to play the next round, in the post interview Coach Billy Donovan says, “We can only just take each game as it comes.”
Indeed Coach, indeed.