Dear friends,
This post shall not be short and for that I am sorry. It has taken me 2 months now to gather the courage to write it, 2 months to pull myself together enough to look back on all that happened and try to put it into words that will perhaps make sense to you. I want to be clear, this isn’t a post written for those who are terminally ill and dying. While I wish you every comfort, I fear this post will not give you any. This post is for those who are faced with watching a loved one die. It will be raw and real and perhaps a beautiful heart breaking mess. I can only hope you gain something from this and that it some how helps you know what watching death can be like.
First I must tell you about my Father. Peter Albert Labrie Sr.
My father was a 60 year old man. He was a mans man if you can picture that. Tall, Strong, and the hardest worker I have ever known. He was a hunter, fisherman, and if it had an engine he was determined to fix it, be it a car, motorcycle, snowmobile, boat. You name it, he would be working on it! He had worked his whole life as a tool maker, a real blue collar job. He was truly salt of the earth. Vacations for him consisted of putting food on the table, mostly fishing with his family and traveling back to Canada to see cousins and where his parents grew up. He loved his hunting vacations with the guys and talked about them often. I can’t say he was a great hunter…. but he put food on the table. I grew up in a meat and potato house hold. Dad didn’t skimp on proteins and goodness was there a variety, much of it he caught himself! He was always working working working. If he didn’t know how to do something he would find someone who did and learn. I can’t recall him ever reading a novel but goodness he read a lot of manuals! He was smart in a way many people just aren’t. He did his own home renovations, even the electrical. If he could save a few pennies he would! For some reason he was a person who feared not having “enough”. Alas, that is post for another day.
So now that you can picture the amazing man my Dad was, let me also share that he was hardly ever sick. He might have called in sick to work over his 40 years working perhaps 5 times for himself, normally the flu, or a small mishap injury requiring an ER trip. He was a healthy guy, a bit of high blood pressure, a bit of weight, but over all in good health for his age. His doctor seemed to hyper focus on his weight, it stressed him and he did everything she said, always.
So when he suddenly started getting pains and odd symptoms and went to his doctor I was shocked that she tried to say his abdominal pain and back pain was due to his weight and diet. He had been loosing weight actually. Again and again he did what he was told. Getting appointments were hard as it was and when she saw him she didn’t seem to listen. I listened and without a medical degree I remember telling him I feared it was cancer… I had heard enough about cancer that it just sounded familiar. I was worried. Dad tried to brush it off, saying the doctor now thought it was arthritis in his back. That didn’t make any sense. She signed him up for physical therapy and gave him Tamidol. Soon the pain was so bad Dad couldn’t manage to go to work. He took more of the Tramadol and prescribed as it wasn’t helping and when he went to the doctor to explain it wasn’t working rather than giving him a different pain killer she got upset with him and sent him home with nothing. He had never abused medications, never sought pain pills before but now was missing work due to pain and his doctor was doing nothing. I was pissed beyond belief for him. I was scared too. The strong man I knew and counted on like a mountain was a mess of pain. He still though trusted his doctor though he was upset with her. She set up some more tests at least but it was months before they could fit him in.
Dad tried to keep functioning of course, but every day was torture. Finally he didn’t want to miss any more work, the pain was too bad, he went to the ER that night in hopes he would be able to function the next morning. What happened there changed everything.
Part 2
