3MF

Michael Flickinger, 1948-2006

Back on November 28, my father celebrated his 58th birthday. Ever since leaving Mary Free Bed Hospital, he has been living at home in the front room on the hospital bed procured by the VA. He still enjoyed playing the Tiger Woods golf video games with his friends that would stop by and also watching all of sports channels on the big screen. For his birthday we got him DVDs and various editions of the Scene It board game that he could enjoy from his bed.

It was a few days later that he started making an occasional comment that seemed to come out of nowhere. Occasionally he would just space out. It became clear that he wouldn't be able to play with his birthday gifts. As the days progressed so did his confusion. At one point i saw his try to make a phone call with the television remote. He would ask my mom "do you see the man watching television with me" where there was no one else in the room. His has shook to the point where he would spill any water he tried to drink. My mother would feed him but eventually his appetite disappeared. By the middle of December he would eat very little and was only away for 2-3 hours a day.

Today i got a call from my sister to come over because he wasn't doing so well. When i got there, my sister, mother and uncle were sitting in the front room around him. He became very quiet. We each took turns putting out hand on his chest to see if we could detect a heartbeat or any signs of breathing. We couldn't tell if he was live or dead. At around 6:40pm we called the Hospice nurse who was supposed to be stopping by later in the evening to perform an evaluation. He told us to hold a light up to his eyes to see if we could detect a response. After we held open the eyelid, the light revealed frozen pupils. That's when we knew for sure that he was gone.

A flood of activity followed. The nurse arrived 30 minutes later to confirm our suspicions. Because my father had not been formally admitted into the Hospice program at the time, we had to contact the police to make the pronouncement. First an ambulance arrived. The paramedics hooked up a LifePak which showed the flatline pattern often seen on television emergency room dramas. They made a print out and waited for the police to arrive. When the officers came, they made a phone call to the medical examiner and the hospital to actually make the legal pronouncement. Around this time a handful of relatives also began to fill the house. Finally, the funeral home arrived to take the body away around 9:00pm. They lifted his body off the bed onto the stretcher and rolled him down the wheelchair ramp that he last rolled up on his return home from the hospital.

Thus the final chapter in my father's fight with cancer has been written. His passing was very peaceful (almost undetectable). Even though you can never be truly prepared, we at least knew it was coming soon. I would like to thank everyone who has been so supportive during this difficult time. Hy heart goes out to the many other families struggling with this terrible disease.

Posted by Matthew at December 28, 2006 11:50 PM