My father, a fairly healthy 84-year-old, all of a sudden got struck down by severe jaundice (黃疸) symptoms about 3 months ago. A quick exam and open stomach surgery found his bile duct and part of his liver were infested with cancerous tumor that blocked the normal flow of bile secretion and caused the vomiting, loss of appetite and all other jaundice symtoms. The doctors inserted a tube to his stomach to divert the bile liquid out of his body to bring his physical condition back to normal, which was eventually achieved after the initial surgery, treatment of internal bleeding, an unexpected but necessary surgery to remove a blood clog that was the result of an accidental fall earlier this year. Then the doctors and we (my sisters and brother and I) weighed the option of whether to do a major surgery that would cut off almost half of his liver, for the hope of removing all the cancerous organs in his liver and bile ducts. It was an agonizing decision to make, mostly due to his old age: the doctors were concerned such major surgery would cause complications during and after the operation, with no guarantee of removing all the cancerous cells in the first place. Without surgery, on the other hand, the doctors estimated he has about 3 to 6 months to live.
At the end, we (including Father) decided not to have the surgery, and the doctors put internal tubes through the tumor in his liver and bile duct to replace the external one, and sent him home.
I flew back to Taipei in mid July to stay with and help care for him, along with my two sisters and one brother, who have been living around him there for their adult lives.
Father actually looked pretty good when I saw him, better than a month ago when I was with him in the hospital. In fact according to my sisters he's been eating, sleeping, and walking fairly well after he got out of the hospital, to their great relief.
They rearranged their daily lives to take turn to come over and accompany him during the day, and hired a care giver for the night, while I stayed in the same apartment with him during my 2 week stay there.
Father has been quite a disciplinarian since young: He's been waking up at 3:30 AM and taking a hike over to a neighboring hill park, where he does exercise and enjoys time with his buddies, for the past 40+ years, rain or shine, without disruption, until now. So starting the 3rd day after I got there, seeing that he really could eat, sleep, and walk quite well, I asked him and he complied, to take a stroll in the neighboring park in the early morning. Thus began our daily routine together for the next 11 days while I was there.
We didn't talk much, as usual, while we walked, though an additional factor getting into play now was the fact that he is very hard on hearing so it would take me extra effort to speak to him and that I sense sometimes makes him uncomfortable, so I elected to keep quiet most of the time with him.
At the end of our walk, when coming back home, I would stop by some breakfast joint and have an "eat-out" with him. It's a traditional Chinese soymilk place with open counter selections of delicacies. I'd ask him to pick what he likes to eat, and watch with some amazement that he spiritedly asked and picked things he wanted to try, like a kid in a candy store, then ate and finished them neatly, leaving not a shred of crumbs on the table.
One day when we walked by a corner of streets in the neighborhood, he broke the silence: "This piece of land used to belong to XXX..." whom I know was an old friend of his. He then told me how as young partners they bought and developed the land together... "How about Brickman Tiam," I took the opportunity to mention another old friend of his whose name I could still remember, for the sake of more conversation. "Oh, he passed away long time ago... He's the person we all bought bricks from for our construction work..." Yup, lots of things and ages have passed here... I remember when I was a kid, these busy street corners and store fronts and apartment buildings were all just rice paddies and dirt roads with ox carts roaming around... To father, a duck farm boy with elementary school education, went apprenticing at his uncle's construction firm, then made it out and built his own land development/real estate career; from the days running from US air raids during World War II when Taiwan was under Japanese rule, to Kuomintang era, to this Internet age... He must have lots of memories to reminisce now...
What is he thinking now, I sometimes wondered. We never intentionally shielded him from knowing his own physical plight--the doctors discussed and explained their diagnosis and prognosis with us in front of him, and he had to be informed and agree on any surgeries he went through, so he must know, or at least had a hunch about the seriousness of the "disease" he has now. But still, we doubt if anyone ever mentioned to him that there was estimate that he could only live a few months more, in the worst case scenario. None of us wants to do that.
He seems to still keep quite a keen mind, though. Every afternoon, he'd pull out an old ledger of his, and start writing and checking the numbers from bank statements against those on his book, with full diligence and focus, for the properties he owns. He's not a miser or a bean counter of any sort, but rather I think this is his own way of keeping things organized and himself mentally occupied every day.
And he walks fast, sometimes even faster than I and the care giver. He eats well too, and seems wanting to try things he never tried before--I once took him to a McDonald's for breakfast--or things he remembers well in his younger days--he once asked my uncle who accompanied him in a late afternoon walk to buy some fatty stewed pork for him on the way back, a food he had avoided in his healthy diet for decades.
But about a couple of days before I left, he told my sister that his appetite is down and is feeling occasional nausea again, and the care giver noticed his skin is turning yellowish too.
On the day I left, I went with my sister for his second follow-up exam. After we told the doctor that my father was feeling nausea and losing appetite and showing yellowish skin, he shook his head and said "The tumor is growing, the tube is blocked somewhere (by the tumor)," and showed me the result of the blood test my father took last time that indicated his liver bile index is higher than normal again. "He needs to get back to hospital as soon as possible," he said.
On the evening I left, my father stayed a bit over his usual bed time, just to see me off. When the time came, I walked up to him, gave him a hug, told him to take care of himself, and that I will be back again soon, and left.
I then realized that was the first time I ever hugged my father in my life.
