July to the present

There is so much that has happened in the past 6 months. I am staring my PAO right in the face. It is only a week away from today and I can't believe it is actually happening. I have been so busy with life the past 6 months that I have hardly had time to think or worry about this surgery thing. It has been nice to be distracted and busy with the kids and the holidays. One major kink in the plans that has been really hard is my dad being diagnosed with lung cancer in October. He has stage 3b lung cancer and is going through chemo right now. The prognosis is not good and it has been devastating for my whole family. I live a long ways away from him so it has been difficult to not be able to visit and be there when he needs help or company. I had to come to terms with whether or not I was going to go through with surgery or not. At first I felt like I could never forgive myself if something happened to my dad and I was bedridden post surgery. Or just thinking about the time I would lose with him when he was feeling good was killing me! But my dad has been so supportive of me and told me I was not going to put this off on account of him. He came to visit for Halloween, we went there for Thanksgiving, and now he is making another trip tomorrow. He has been so great at wanting to spend as much time as possible with us. Traveling isn't easy for him right now but he is feeling relatively decent in between treatments. So he will be here up until the day before my surgery and then my mom will be here to take care of me for a few weeks...hooray! What would I do without her? I am finally feeling good about the decision to go through with surgery and that everything will be okay...for me and my dad. I have my pre op appointment tomorrow. I don't imagine it will be too eventful. Just mostly pushing paperwork and bloodwork in preparation for surgery day.