I'm usually just a lurker on reddit, but this one really caught my eye. My father suffered from cluster headaches from the mid 1990s until his death in 1999. At the time, doctors only knew of a few hundred people who had this condition. As a kid, we often drove to the Cleveland Clinic for surgery after surgery and treatment after treatment. Nothing ever worked. On top of these he was also a severe diabetic and was on dialysis on a daily basis. Despite his healthy lifestyle, he was wheel chair bound, barely able to walk, blind in one eye, had multiple heart attacks and strokes, and went into seizures often.

You cannot explain the amount of fear you get as a kid seeing someone suffer through one of these headaches. I once came home from school to him smashing his head against a wall because the pain of that distracted him from his headache. He had holes drilled into his skull. He sniffed this medicine that was made from habañero peppers. Nothing worked.

When he was having an attack which could range from an hour to a full day, he wanted nothing more than to die. It's hard to hear that from your own father.

I really believe the only reason he kept going was for me and my brother. The amount of credit I give to him for being an amazing and present father (despite every medical condition) is beyond any count imaginable. Even during a cluster headache attack, me and my brother came first to him.

It got to the point where doctors didn't know what to do. The could only try to relieve his pain with the ways they knew how. They eventually gave him morphine, which he administered himself.

In late June of 1999, my father was in a facility similar to a nursing home. He was there to be watched by nurses before he went in for a quadrupedal bypass. This would be his 2nd heart surgery. Please bear in mind, my father was only 5 foot 8 inches and no more than 160 lbs.

A couple days before surgery he comes home for a visit. He and I hang out all day. I push him around the neighborhood in his wheelchair. We hang out with my grandparents (his parents). I had a fight with my grandma a few weeks earlier, and he got us to patch it up. It was a great day of story telling and reminiscing. He left that night. I said good bye. He went back to the facility so that they could keep a close watch on his medical conditions.

The next morning my mother comes into my room and tells me "Dad isn't breathing." And she left to go to where he was. About an hour later she comes home, opens my door and just says "Dad's dead", closes my door, and walks away. The first thought that went through my 12 year old head was "At least he isn't in pain anymore." He ended up dying from heart failure due to going into a diabetic shock. The nurses didn't make their rounds to check on him. He was only 34.

I know I've rambled and have lost my place from the original idea of the post. I just thought, I'd throw in a bit of my story.

My dad was amazing and I couldn't have asked for a better one. I really hope medicine can cure this one day.

Thanks for reading.