I may have shared earlier that my dad got a Dx of prostate cancer in early Jan.   His prostate removal surgery was scheduled for late Jan but had to be delayed when he fell through the ceiling of the living room while putting away the Christmas tree in the attic.

He severely bruised several ribs, tweaked his back and gouged a chunk of meat out of the back of his left arm.   

So, his surgery was postponed until Feb 11.  Not a great way to celebrate my birthday let me tell ya.

Surgery went well and so did the first week of recovery.  Mom and dad kicked me out on the one week anniversary of his surgery so I made the 4 hour drive home  to rejoin the live of my incredible wife.  That did not last long.  I had been home for about two hours when I got a call from mom. Dad was in an ambulance on his way to the ER after getting violently nauseous and passing out.   I was going to immediately head back to mom and dad's but mom told me to wait until she had more info.  As it turned out, dad was both dehydrated and had a live level UTI.  Apparently not unusual after they disconnect your urethra from your bladder and strip out our prostate. They got home at 02:30 AM when mom texted me with the news.  They changed his antibiotics, gave him 2L of fluids, a huge dose of IV antibiotics and sent him home.  They had asked me to call my brother and update him. Which I did then crashed for a few hours.

So, I got up at 05:00 and headed back the 4 hours to mom and dads and have been here since.  Dad has had a pretty rough recovery. Very sore, problems eating and GI performance issues.  Throwing up strained one of his incisions and he had several days of notable bleeding, several CCs at least once a day with nearly constant blood and fluid seepage.  On Thursday AM  I finally got him to call his surgeon's office.  They told him to come in immediately and they would get him in. Mom was on her first outing since dad's surgery. She went to a Quilting show with one of her Quilting buddies.

So, I loaded dad in the car and we headed to the surgeon's office.

As it turned out, he has a pocket behind one of his incisions that was filling up with blood and that would drain nearly constantly with a once a day full drain.  Very messy.  They pulled one of his staples and packed it to help it heal.  Now I am pulling and repacking it 2-3x per day.

He has improved significantly over the past 48 hours.  Still sore but less so, able to get up and down on his own now, and able to laugh a bit without cringing in pain.

I am here for the duration of his recovery.

It has been an emotional challenge to see my bullet proof USMC dad in a vulnerable condition and requiring help.  

I am a lucky guy to have my incredible parents and to have my amazing wife who has my back while I am here with my parents.

The job search continues with a bunch of interviews, though telephone and skype based, until dad is all the way back or until my brother can get here.  That may take a while.  He and his wife and their youngest are locked down in Singapore due to the Corona virus outbreak and may not be able to travel for several weeks.  I think dad will be mostly recovered in the next couple of weeks but I do not intend to go anywhere until then.

This scared the crap out of me.  My 77yo father is not one for help or to be ill.  The good news, without a prostate there is not much chance of having prostate cancer any longer.  

He is very concerned about not working out and losing his very high level of fitness.  Which is a huge improvement over the look of sheer terror that was on his face as mom and I hugged him as they getting ready to push him into surgery.