My dad pointed out this picture of his family to most of the doctor's and nurses that came into his hospital room this past May and June.
My dad was diagnosed with Crohn's disease when he was 19. Over the year's he has had surgeries when his Crohn's disease flares up to remove more of his large intestine. My dad has always handled this without complaint. One doctor told him that he has never seen someone who has lived so well with Crohn's disease. As his daughter I can tell you, he's never let the disease have a big impact on his life. My dad had a major Crohn's surgery in 1988 and then he went for over two decades without the disease flaring up, which is quite remarkable. A couple years ago he started feeling pain in his rear end. Over time this got worse and eventually he went to the doctor. We eventually found out that this pain was caused by Crohn's disease flaring up again, but we now know it could have also been partially caused by cancer. My dad had surgery for a fistula last July, which indicated that Crohn's disease was likely active again. My dad was referred to Dr. Datta, who is surgeon (and who I also happened to go to high school with). In September Dr. Datta did surgery to put a seton in to help with the fistula (you can google it if you want more info). This surgery revealed a second fistula and a second surgery for a second seton was performed. Then in January a colonoscopy revealed that Crohn's disease was indeed quite active again and that my Dad would have to have an ileostomy (again, google it if you want). Usually when a colonoscopy is performed it reveals if the patient has colon cancer. However, in 2% of cases the colonoscopy does not pick up on the cancer. In my dad's case, the Crohn's disease hid the cancer and the colonoscopy did not reveal the cancer, that was certainly already present. We've been told that cancer has likely been present for a couple years or so.
That brings us to this past May 21 when my dad had his ileostomy. The surgery went well, but Dr. Datta was a little bit concerned with the colon that he was removing, because it felt a little bit too hard for him, so he removed my dad's entire bowel as a precaution and sent the tissue for a biopsy. As a family we knew tissue had been sent off for a biopsy, but the doctors said it probably wasn't anything to worry about and so we weren't concerned. On May 29th I got a phone call that rocked my world a little bit. My parents were calling because Dr. Datta had just been into the hospital room to tell my dad that he had cancer. That was an emotional day for our family and we were left with so many questions, which have slowly been answered since then.
Instead of thinking about the cancer over the next few days, our family became somewhat distracted with other health concerns that started to come up for my dad. First, my dad's body had undergone serious internal changes during the surgery and his insides seemed to be struggling to figure out their new anatomy. This led to all kinds of complications and suffering for my dad, including the fact that he vomited his wasted instead of it going out to his ostomy bag. Then he was diagnosed with a bladder infection (which we found out later was e. coli) and he was put on antibiotics. Somehow the infection made it into his blood stream and he developed sepsis. This was not discovered until my dad went into septic shock sometime in the night of June 2. My mom got a terrifying phone call from the hospital very early in the morning on June 3rd telling her that she needed to hurry to the hospital to "help them make some decisions". All six of my parent's children rushed to the hospital as quick as they could. This even meant poor Laura, who was a week overdue with her fourth baby had to go to the hospital in Red Deer for a stress tests and then come to Calgary. Jen was already in town, but Jason drove up from Lethbridge. He was in the ICU with 2 or 3 doctors and 7 nurses working on him for hours. Although it had been a close call, by the time we all arrived at the hospital my dad was through the worst and we were assured that he would live. He still describes that as the worst night of his life (and this is a man who has passed kidney stones multiple times). In the midst of the septic shock, my dad was also diagnosed with pneumonia. We are grateful he made it through that night. After that terrible night, my dad spent a few more days in the ICU and finally started to improve. He was actually able to start eating solids on June 5th and although it has been baby steps, he has been improving since then. In just two short weeks in the hospital my dad lost 18 pounds. After being discharged from the hospital on Monday, June 17th, he actually lost a couple more pounds and was down to 140. Since then he has started gaining weight and his main focus right now is to gain weight so that his body can be strong going into radiation and chemo. We will be able to start those as soon as his incisions from his surgery are reasonably healed, hopefully in a few weeks.
Sarah (34), Katie (25), Jason (almost 30), Laura (28)
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