History of Dad

Our parents got divorced when Chris was 12 and I was 14. When my father left we rarely saw him. We would see him on the weekend occasionally until he got married when I was 18. At this point we saw him once a year at Christmas time. After a few years I broke this tradition and we didn’t see him for about 10 years.

Chris has been in and out of the hospital with her gastroparesis since 1994. In that time my father only came to see my sister a handful of times. Myself or my mom would call him to let him know that she was in the hospital and all he would say was “keep us posted”. My mom handled Chris’ sickness pretty much by herself.

When my mom and sister moved up here things changed. This is when she moved in with me and got really terribly ill. My dad would take her to doctor’s appointments and to the ER occasionally which we really did appreciate because it took a burden off of us. But because of this now he is trying to take “control” of the situation.

He wants all of my sister’s records because he wants to send them to Duke University. Chris doesn’t want that. She is tried of being poked and prodded and would be too weak to even make it to a trip to another hospital. In her heart she knows that we have tried everything and it has all failed. The medications, the botox injections, the pacemaker, and the gastrectomy were all failures. My father doesn’t want to accept this mainly out of his own guilt for not being there for his daughter.

He is completely stressing her out and we have told him to let it go but I know he won’t. He thinks he is going to come up with some miracle cure for her condition. Something that I obviously couldn’t find with all the hours of research I have done on the subject. I am sorry that he is pained over what is going on but so am I. My mom and I have seen her waste away over the last year. Her body will never be the same. Doesn’t it mean anything to him that the doctor referred to her condition as terminal?