by Leslie Keck

Created on: November 18, 2008

The story I'm about to write is not about my father but my step-father. He was more of a dad to me that my own father. He was always there for me when I needed him, no matter what it was.

Everything was going fine and then one day my dad started having a hard time swallowing his food, he would always choke on it no matter how much he chewed it. After this had happened for awhile, they went to the doctors to have it checked out.

A.L.S (Lou-Gehrig's Disease) is what they had diagnosed him with. It was not good news, it was a death sentence. A.L.S usually starts in the limbs, but with my dad it had started in his throat, which meant less time for him. They had giving him approximately 6 months.

As the time passed, it became harder and harder for him to eat, and eventually he had to quit smoking because the muscles in his throat would not allow him to get enough suction to get smoke out of the cigarette. Eventually he had to get a stomach tube put in so he could eat. The muscles in his throat had gotten so bad, he wasn't even able to swallow his saliva anymore.With every passing day it became harder to see him go through the suffering.

Christmas was especially hard, it was his favorite holiday of the year and he was always the one to cook Christmas dinner. This particular Christmas while we sat and had dinner, trying to keep things as normal as possible, my dad sat in the livingroom unable to even eat a morsel of it. It was enough to bring tears to anyone's eyes.

After awhile he ended up having another surgery to get a breathing tube put in. By this time he was confined to a wheelchair. He had been sick about a year and a half by this point. He kept claiming he was going to beat this disease, he was going to live until they found a cure. This made it harder on everyone because we all knew different, but we weren't willing to take away his hope.

He was admitted into the hospital where they could keep a closer eye on him, but all he kept writing was "take me home, I want to die at home." We took him home, we wanted whatever time he had left to be about what he wanted. By this time he had lost his speech, so he had to write everything down.

Then one day my mom received a phone call from my younger brother that dad had fell to the floor and he wasn't responding to anything. My mom immediately called 911 and then started on her way home in a panic. The ambulance attendance revived him and took him back to the hospital. They had said had they known he had A.L.S they would have just let him go.

The family got together at the hospital that evening and had a meeting with the doctors. They had asked us if he passed again if we wanted them to revive him, as hard as it was we told them "no." He had now suffered 2 years and we didn't have the heart to bring him back to suffer more. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, but it was the best thing for him.

R.I.P Dad

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