Don H

About Don H

11 years ago I was 25 years old. I was just starting my family, was married and had two small children. I had started a daycare business in my home so that I could stay home with my kids. I had grown up with my father, who was a single dad. He did the best he could raising my brother and I alone. We became even closer the older I got and he had become my best friend. My dad was always there to help me with anything that he could. He loved hanging out with his grandkids and spending time at our house helping us with projects. He started to complain about his body hurting a lot, but blamed it on getting old, he was 56. One day he called me and said that he had urinated blood and he was scared. I forced him to make a doctors appointment right away. He wasn’t one to ever go to the doctor for a check up or take any preventative measures for healthcare. It was after that doctors appointment that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He moved into our home and started chemotherapy but it was too late. The cancer was too strong and had spread throughout his body. He decided to start hospice care and towards the end he stopped eating and drinking so he could “hurry up and die”. Watching him in so much pain and trying to help him in any way that I could was so hard, there were many times I wanted to give up and send him to a hospital. But, I knew that he had done so much in his life for me, the least I could do was be there for him until the end. He passed away in June 2006, just a few months after I had my third child. He was too weak in those months to hold his newest grandchild and had said many times that his biggest fear was his grandkids would grow up and not know who he is. We miss him so much and think about him all the time, I miss my best friend.

Since his death, our family has participated in Relay for Life and Prostate Cancer race fundraisers. The biggest thing I would want people to know is that this disease is curable. Go to your check ups, do any preventative health measures that you can, and love your family and take photos and videos of your times together- because that is all we have left of my dad.

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