I'm home, and the world has changed forever. About 10 days ago, I got a sudden call from Laura that Dad had fallen at home and couldn't get up, and Mom had been found wandering around outside the house. I last spoke to Dad the previous weekend, and he had sounded awful. He had been fighting pneumonia, and his acid reflux was acting up. Couldn't shake the pneumonia even after a complete round of antibiotics. He was coughing terribly and sounded miserable. He also had an appointment to go to the GI specialist and was wondering exactly how he was going to get there since Mom can't drive any more. But the day before that, he collapsed at home. A neighbor saw Mom wandering around outside and came out to see if she was all right, and they went back inside and found Dad. I don't know if Mom forgot what she was doing, or couldn't figure out what to do, but Dad had asked her to get help. So Dad was at the hospital, and Laura arranged for some respite care to come stay with Mom until I could get there. I flew out on Friday, thinking that I'd be taking care of Mom until Dad got over the pneumonia; Laura's classes were starting so she couldn't come out right away, but I'd stay around a week and come home when Laura got out there, and she'd stay for a week, and together we'd get them into assisted living. I got out there on the 25th, and headed for the hospital as soon as I got there. Dad was having fluid drained from his lungs, apparently they got 2 liters out and there was another 2 liters the next day. He was resting most of the time, but seemed generally ok although very weak. And confused, at one point that first night he thought he was in France. Mom was awfully confused too, she told me a couple times in the first couple days that dad was trying to kill himself and her. And she wanted me to look at her poop (also did both with the respite care lady) because she thought it looked abnormal (Nope). And wanted to know if I thought they should stay together (The 25th was their 55th anniversary...I had forgotten). Over the next day Dad's confusion was getting worse, especially at night. An MRI didn't show any neurological reason for the confusion, and he had to have his lungs drained again. By Sunday afternoon the doctors had found malignant cells in the fluid they drained from his lungs, stage 4 lung cancer, they said. The oncologist did not think Dad was a good candidate for chemo, and guessed that he might have 3 months if untreated, maybe 8 with chemo, if he reacted well to it. Dad asked me to let Dr. Pettit know what was happening, which I did, adn he immediately contacted me and began lobbying to get Dad moved out of Banner and into Mayo Hospital, because he didn't think Banner had any real proficiency in cancer treatment. Since they'd already recommended hospice, which we'd contacted, we figured we had nothing to lose so we started trying to do it. But there was no accepting physician at Mayo to do a transfer, and Mayo said they couldn;t do anything that Banner couldn't, so there was no transfer. It wasn't as simple as Dr. Pettit thought, it seems. Meanwhile we had scheduled a lung procedure to block the fluid buildup for Tuesday, but we cancelled it because of the transfer that didn't happen. Which cost a few days. We then went into a holding pattern because the surgeon couldn't do it until Friday now. So we waited, Dad just hung out at the hospital getting more confused and hardly eating. Meanwhile, we went back to the hospice plan and finding a care place for Mom and Dad to move into after Dad was discharged, one that could take care of both of them as long as possible. Thursday the 31st, The surgeon had a cancellation so Dad got in a day early, and we had a good discussion with him as lucid as he's been in a while. I told him what the doctors all had said, and that Mayo declined the transfer, and what should we do. "Bob's schemes were always overly optimistic," he told me, and chose hospice over radical procedures. So he went in to have the pleurodesis, and shortly afterwards I took Mom to visit with the Pettits. They took us out to lunch, and I think Bob was ready to show me all sorts of new research on lung cancer and when I told him what Dad told me, I just about lost it. It was the first time I'd said it out loud. I composed myself as best I could and we finished lunch in time to visit at the house some more before we had to run to pick up Laura, who was having a real odyssey getting to Phx. We dashed to the airport, drove around until we met up with her on the curb, and dashed out again to tour assisted living places. They looked nicer than the ones we saw in July. We found a nice group home in Scottsdale, one with a full range of care, where we thought they'd be good to go until moving Mom back east. We started getting things ready for moving as soon as we could. Over the next couple days we ran over the the place a couple times, moving in clothes and pictures and furniture; the hospice delivered a hospital bed for Dad, we got the pictures up on the wall, and everything was about ready, as soon as Dad was discharged. But the surgeon kept looking in, checking him out, and saying we'd keep him for another day. By Sunday, Dad still had the drain in and was still just waiting, but started being unable to keep anything down and going into afib. Monday, I had to go home (Dad fortunately had enough Southwest points to get me a ticket for free). Laura dropped me off and headed for the hospital, where Dad was no longer nauseous but still out of it. The drain finally came out Monday afternoon but they decided to keep him another day, then the vomiting started again. Tuesday, Dad was uncomfortable, his back hurt, and wasn't passing urine so they were possibly going to put his catheter back in. Laura saw some test results: adenocarcinoma, possibly throughout his body. By afternoon Dad was not having a good day, wheezing very badly, vomiting again, and seemed very uncomfortable. Then he started vomiting blood, and around 4:30, Tuesday, September 5, 2017, Dad died.