Wednesday was Dad’s 75th birthday. Tuesday night I was wishing that it fell on a Saturday, so I could get there to see him on his birthday.

Wednesday morning I started getting texts from Stephanie. Dad had been up from 3 to 6:30 and wasn’t lucid. He was talking about hoeing cotton, something he hadn’t done in over 50 years.

At some point, early on, Stephanie said to come in because she didn’t think Dad was going to survive. I got through my two morning classes, having told them what was going on, handed the tests over to Kori to do for Friday, canceled my two T/R classes, and started to go to the house to pack.

Ron had texted me that Micah was coming with us. I called Micah to see if I could pick him up. He said he hadn’t packed yet. I said I would wait. He told me he was taking that OT test for grad school. So I hung up.

Went home. Packed. Ron arrived from getting his car cleaned out. I told him that Micah was in a test. He told me to go on without them and they would follow. I asked him to get me lunch so I could finish sending emails to students. He did. We ate together and I started driving to Houston.

I left around noon and I got there around 6. The traffic wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible either.

On the way Steph had sent a text saying Dad was in the ER at MD Anderson. Went straight to MD Anderson. Dad had been given an IV and was more lucid. I asked if he had been dehydrated. She said no.

That morning, sometime, the hospital had called with Dad’s diagnosis from the biopsy on Monday. They said he has diffused large high grade B-Cell lymphoma.

The lymphoma doc kept saying 80% cure rate, but she didn’t even know Dad had had a stroke or that his kidneys weren’t functioning or any of that.

…
Yesterday the texts were that
Dad has to have another biopsy because MDA says the biopsy wasn’t big enough.
Dad may die from the chemo.
If they do chemo, he might live for as much as 5 months.
If they don’t do chemo, he will die within 2 weeks.

I am not sure why that has changed. Did the lymphoma doctor finally start saying that? Or what?