Dad's entrance into eternity may be quite soon…

Keep Daddy in your prayers, please.  It looks like his time on earth is quite short.  The consensus is that he may not make it through the weekend.  His breathing is incredibly shallow.

I'm not really sure what else to say right now.

Daddy's Updates for Wednesday

I really did not know what to post yesterday.  Sometimes, saying nothing is the best thing.  Not that anything particularly bad was going on.  It's just that I did not know about anything really different to tell you.

Lori is spending more time with him again today.  Dad's brother and his wife visited.  (And maybe the key word might be visiting, but I'm not sure about anything at this point. )

They are moving Daddy to hospice today, if everything goes according to plan.  (I have never yet met a plan that entirely fell into place, sometimes they go better than anticipated.  Occasionally.  Usually they go a little bit worse. )

I'm finding lists of questions that I really wish I had been asking all my older relatives for the last 30-40 years.  For example, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lineage/famhist.htm

At least there are some others that I can still ask…

Dad's Situation for Today

A few people have asked me to update things here, not everybody likes facebook.

Just a brief run through for those who missed some of the information.

1. December 10, Dad went to the Emergency Room.  He had awakened with difficulty breathing and pain in one shoulder.  Diagnosis: 3 pulmonary embolism…  Embolisms…  Emboli.  Whatever the plural of embolism is.  He went home after a few days and we thought that that was that. 
2. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, he felt like his chest was a little tight.  His should have probably gone in to see somebody.
3. He went into one of those freestanding clinic/ER things.  They thought it was probably a bad case of pneumonia, started an IV, and got him into the hospital.
4. You don't really want the day by day and blow by blow, I think.  Cutting to the chase: cancer.  It is cancer of the prostate that has involved the lungs, spine, lymphatic system, and abdomen.
5. While he probably had symptoms earlier and wrote them off as "minor issues of getting older," I cannot convey how quickly things have moved since Christmas.  When we saw him yesterday, a few words send him into heartbreaking cough that lasts way too long.  If you know him and care about him, now would be a good time to tell him.
6. His pain is under control.  The face mask delivery for oxygen is turned up as high as it can go, and it really isn't enough.
7. Friday night and Saturday morning were rough enough that they suggested that any family probably wanted to be there this weekend.  His wife's children and grandchildren have been spending time.  Mom, I, and the Johnston crew spent about three HRS with him, drifting in an out of the room in small groups.  (After we all tried to fit in at once!)
8. He really rallied.  Don't get me wrong, this is serious.  We are not talking years or months…  Maybe not even weeks.  He just perked up for the visit.
9. Meanwhile, Lori was hard to get Ahold of until yesterday.  She has been teaching on an Air Force base in South Korea.  For Christmas break, she was on a tour of New Zealand.  She should be getting into town tomorrow evening.