Del Montess
Rock Crawler
Some of you have met my dad at local comps or AWCC a couple years ago.
In 2005 he was diagnosed with colon cancer and has been valiantly kicking it's ass ever since (going in and out of remission). 2 years ago (almost to the day), it came back, as stage 4 (in lymph, bladder, lung, and liver). He got treatment at City of Hope, and was doing impressively well.
Weekend before last, we took a family trip to Solvang and had an AMAZING time. Monday, he was having trouble breathing and his room air oxygen saturation (which needs to be well above 90, above 95 is optimal), was between 50 and 70 (which is really, really bad). We called an ambulance and went to the ER (at the hospital I work at), and he was admitted to ICU. We spent 3 days there (and my best friend was his nurse all 3 days, which was wonderful).
We were hoping that maybe it was an infection like pneumonia that would clear up with antibiotics, so I took his CT scan cd down to City of Hope and spoke to his oncologists who read it, and said that they thought it looked like lung cancer that had gotten completely out of control (my words, they were much more eloquent and less blunt), and that it probably wasn't reversible. So after a few days of antibiotics with no sign of improvement, we took him home Thursday on hospice. He had a very comfortable night thanks to my syringes full of dilaudid (it's like morphine on crack).
The chaplain came to pray with us early Friday afternoon, and as she was finishing the Lord's Prayer (we were all circled around my dad praying), he took his final breath. It is a blessing knowing that he went surrounded by family, and very comfortably (I had just given him another dose of dilaudid), which was what he had asked for.
My dad and I have always been really close; I'm an only child so I never had to share my parents' attention or time... which means that the three of us were an incredibly close family. I'm so thankful that Jake is part of our family and it isn't just my mom and I-- we're both so scattered right now that I think everything would just fall apart.
I'm not really sure why I'm posting this... I think I just need to get it all out. I didn't want to post sooner because I didn't want to take anything away from Chip's passing (which I think was remarkably close in time to my dad...) I hope they meet up there with Jake's dad and wheel some freaking sweet trails in the sky.
In 2005 he was diagnosed with colon cancer and has been valiantly kicking it's ass ever since (going in and out of remission). 2 years ago (almost to the day), it came back, as stage 4 (in lymph, bladder, lung, and liver). He got treatment at City of Hope, and was doing impressively well.
Weekend before last, we took a family trip to Solvang and had an AMAZING time. Monday, he was having trouble breathing and his room air oxygen saturation (which needs to be well above 90, above 95 is optimal), was between 50 and 70 (which is really, really bad). We called an ambulance and went to the ER (at the hospital I work at), and he was admitted to ICU. We spent 3 days there (and my best friend was his nurse all 3 days, which was wonderful).
We were hoping that maybe it was an infection like pneumonia that would clear up with antibiotics, so I took his CT scan cd down to City of Hope and spoke to his oncologists who read it, and said that they thought it looked like lung cancer that had gotten completely out of control (my words, they were much more eloquent and less blunt), and that it probably wasn't reversible. So after a few days of antibiotics with no sign of improvement, we took him home Thursday on hospice. He had a very comfortable night thanks to my syringes full of dilaudid (it's like morphine on crack).
The chaplain came to pray with us early Friday afternoon, and as she was finishing the Lord's Prayer (we were all circled around my dad praying), he took his final breath. It is a blessing knowing that he went surrounded by family, and very comfortably (I had just given him another dose of dilaudid), which was what he had asked for.
My dad and I have always been really close; I'm an only child so I never had to share my parents' attention or time... which means that the three of us were an incredibly close family. I'm so thankful that Jake is part of our family and it isn't just my mom and I-- we're both so scattered right now that I think everything would just fall apart.
I'm not really sure why I'm posting this... I think I just need to get it all out. I didn't want to post sooner because I didn't want to take anything away from Chip's passing (which I think was remarkably close in time to my dad...) I hope they meet up there with Jake's dad and wheel some freaking sweet trails in the sky.
