Canada

What a horrible thing, to find your dad that way. I completely understand how it haunts you, and I am so very, very sorry about your pain.

My dad was rarely sick in his life, and never anything serious. But then he started having pains in his back and ribs. He mentioned them to his doctor, who dismissed them as "old age." My dad was 76 at the time. My dad endured the pain for a few months, until is was unbearable. At that point, my mom took him to urgent care, where they diagnosed him with a broken rib, taped him up, gave him some pain pills, and sent him home. My mom wasn't convinced -- he was in so much pain -- so she drove to the ER, where they eventually diagnosed him with advanced bone cancer. The doctor there was livid. Turned out it was metastasized colon cancer, but why quibble.

He was bedridden from that point forward, on a steady morphine drip. I was living in Canada, and my family took two weeks to tell me because they didn't want to upset me. I flew back to LA the next day. My dad was surprisingly lucid for a couple of days, which allowed us all to visit with him and say what we needed to say. By the third day, though, he was in and out, mostly out. On the fourth day, he called me over and asked if I could get his gun. We talked a little about his plan, and I told him I couldn't do it, but that I'd ask if they could increase his morphine. He was crying. I can tell you: You should never have to see your dad cry.

He died less than 3 weeks from the time he went to urgent care. I don't know how much longer he might have lasted had they caught it earlier; but to this day I have no patience for doctors who dismiss out of hand people's complaints as "old age." Such "diagnoses" are lazy and incompetent, as far as I'm concerned.