On May 2, 2003 my dad passed away from an infection called Sepsis. A cancer called Squmous Cell Carcinoma caused the infection. It all started back in September of 2002. Around that time he had corrotted surgery; they discovered it because he complained that he had a lot of pain on the left side of his face. When my dad had noticed on his face there was a hard lump by his left cheek he kept telling the doctors that it was hurting him and they basically ignored it till it came threw the surface and was really noticeable and the pain worsened. Because it was so noticeable he was sent to a plastic surgeon in October 2002 to remove what he had thought was a cyst. He had a big bandage that looked like an alien stitched to his face. My mom had to put drops in his eyes so that he wouldn’t get an infection.

About a month later the bandage came off. I was with him and my mom in the hospital when the doctor took off the bandage and it had a terrible odor. He had packing in his cheek. He also had reconstruction surgery done. The doctors had to remove skin from his shoulder to close up the wound. My father was in the hospital for about a week and in that time they had to nudge his face to get the blood moving. He then came home but he also had to go to the hyperbarrick chamber (to heal his open wound on his face quicker); that is where he had to lie in a chamber where it was 100% pure oxygen. The first time he went in he had to come right out because he couldn’t breathe but after that he was able to go except for the last treatment he couldn’t do it anymore where it just became too difficult for him.

In February 2003 he went in the hospital because the cancer was growing and he got an infection. At that time they were looking to do a whole face surgery on him so he went to see an oncologist (a physician who deals with cancer) about the procedure. They were talking about cutting away half of his face to get rid of the cancer. We had the surgery all scheduled in the end of March and about one week before the surgery he had gone into congestive heart failure (heart is filled with fluid). We decided against it because the surgery would have entailed about 8-10 hours and that would have been too much for dad.

In April he came home for about one week my mom was trying to wake him to give him medicine and I also tried, but he wouldn’t respond. With that we called my brother and sister to help us get him to the hospital emergency room. We got him there and got him a wheel chair. The nurses also tried to talk to him and no response, so they took him in and prepped him with all the tests they later did on him and found he had an infection. He was there for about one week and then transferred to Stony Brook Hospital. When he was there he was to get radiation two times a day for six weeks but they stopped at four weeks. They noticed that the cancer wasn’t getting any smaller and the infection was spreading. It was doing him more harm than good so they stopped the radiation. My mom would go every day; my brother would drop her off and then after I got off from work. I would often go and visit and then take mom home. He stayed in the hospital because of the infection after a few weeks he was transferred to St. Charles Hospice on April 30, 2003.

On May 1st, my brother went up to visit my dad at night and when he was there my dad made a sound that scared my brother. In the morning of May 2 the nurses told us that he was agitated. My mom was at the hospice; my brother dropped her off and after work I went up to see my dad and he was lying very still and seemed at peace. My mom and I stepped out of the room when we came back my mom looked at him and stated “Oh he looks yellow”. We just sat down and we kept looking at him. Then at that moment I felt his chest and I couldn’t feel anything. I then took his hand to feel his pulse and nothing. My mom then felt his chest then she told me to get the nurse so I did. The nurse came in and put the stethoscope on his chest and moved it around and she didn’t hear anything and she looked at my mom and me and said “I’m sorry he is gone.” My mom and I both started to cry and they closed the curtain to give us privacy and to grieve. My mom called everybody to tell them that he had passed on. Everybody came up to say their goodbyes except my brother who was working and my sister who lives in North Carolina. We told them when we got home; we didn’t tell my niece who was away at college that he passed away because she was taking her finals and didn’t want to upset her. Instead, we told her the day of her last final. On May 5th we had the wake and funeral because we had to wait for my sister to come up and other people that came long distance. There were a lot of people there that paid their respects. It was a VERY sad time for all of us.