My father passed away December 17th at home surrounded by his wife, daughther, myself and 5 other family members. It was very peaceful in the end and he never struggled with pain. There were difficult times during the last couple of weeks in caring for him, just general anxiety, loss of mental capacity and other issues at the end of life. I thank my mom and sister for their unbelievable strength in being his daily caregiver and giving him love each day. I delivered words of remembrance about him at his memorial service and we had a great party that followed (which was his request). We buried him three days before Christmas and then attempted to enjoy a Christmas with his granddaughters opening toy after toy. I don't have much to add after my previous post in November about lessons learned. I have serious personal regrets about how I handled some stages of his disease (wish I would have pushed to be more aggressive when it was still just in the bladder). But I got to say the things I wanted to him and feel fairly at peace with the fact that I got that chance.
Thanks for the words of encouragement from others on this site. I am not an active poster or reader, but I try to provide a little bit of my experience here and there. There are some difficult stories on this part of the board and I hope that bladder cancer patients on other parts of the forum, such as those diagnosed as superficial, read these parts as well. The purpose is to educate so that hopefully they have better outcomes than my father and that they stay aggressive in their eductation and treatment of their disease.
