h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I posted this on my main page the day after my dad died. life tends to go on, so i've moved it here, to my journal. the dates don't match, but it's just as well.

My father was taken ill last month with what turned out to be the final stages of cancer.
It had started in his salivary glands, and after two botched surgeries- the first when they went in to take out his salivary glands and missed a piece of one (how???) and another a year later when they went in to take out his lymph nodes, and missed 3 of them (HOW???) it ended up spreading over the last 5 years to involve his liver, kidneys and lungs.
He went to the hospital on Puerto Rico on a friday, with anemia and dehydration. During the following two weeks, my stepmother had to fight with the nurses to get him his pain medication. He was in screaming pain and agony every six hours for as long as 45, minutes while they took their time locating and administering the morphine. not once or twice, but EVERY 6 hours.

Hospitals are not the best places to be sick. Veterans Hospitals are even worse. Veterans Hospitals in the Caribbean are a step back to the middle ages.

The Doctors were giving him an outside timeline of 6 months, so it was not a surprise, but none the less crushing when- after only two weeks- on Saturday, August 27th 2005 at 9am PST, my father... my hero, Eric Julian Moorhead White passed from this existence.
There are no words.