Cancer

my dad died of kidney failure a year ago friday after a five year fight with leukemia, skin cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, and multiple bouts of sepsis. he was first diagnosed with leukemia in 2020 but in the end it was a prostate cancer tumor that finally blocked his urinary track and caused the kidney failure. i was in the room with him looking at MRI slides with the research oncologist when they first spotted the tumor that would kill. we had driven to spokane where he was getting experimental radiation therapy: they knew he had prostate cancer but they hadn’t seen this particular tumor. they said there was nothing they could do and said he had weeks to months to live. we went home to missoula and a few weeks later i moved up from denver to take care of him. as things went down hill he got weaker and weaker and had to pee more and more frequently, getting up seven difficult and uncomfortable times a night to pee less than an ounce into a urinal we kept next to the bed. he could only get that much out if he was standing, so he would wake up and try to get out of bed even after his legs became too weak to hold him. we got into a routine: a bell on the foot of his bed, me sleeping with one eye open so i could help him before tried to stand alone fell. after many failed attempts to catheter him by the hospice people that left him in a drug induced haze from which he would never fully return, a urologist who lived down the street made a house call and got a catheter in with a single flick of the wrist, but at that point it was too late and his kidneys were shot. he died four days later.