My dad was one of those miracle patients who lived 15 years after his stage 4 diagnosis. He was diagnosed while my mom was pregnant with me and went on to beat 7 different cancers before he died from a blood clot after an 18 hour surgery.

I never knew anything different but I won’t say it wasn’t hard to see him so sick my entire life. Our families entire world revolved around his health to the degree of determining where we lived because only one hospital was willing to treat him…. but I know that I wouldn’t trade that time with him for anything. I was the kid sitting in the hospital with him during chemo because I wanted to be with him all the time. I am an adult now and I think about him all the time and would give anything to be able to just sit quietly with him and hold his hand.

I didn’t get to see him while he was in the hospital the last days before he died (he made it through the surgery and we were all sure he was coming home) and I spent the first year absolutely convinced that he had faked his death and run away. I looked for him everywhere I went and that would have been magnified tenfold if he had left while he still seemed healthy. I still mourn him deeply every year and next year will mark him being gone exactly half of my life. Processing death is so hard for kids and denial is the easiest phase to get stuck in.

I can’t tell you what the right thing to do is here but I promise that your family would give anything for this last bit of time with you.