The Situation Thus Far

Up front disclaimer-- this will be a longer post as I'm going to try to summarize what has happened during the past 48 hours. Future posts to this blog will be a little more brief to provide a quick status as things change.

As many of you are aware, my dad-- Norman Parks-- was in Long Beach, Calif. (just south of LA) on a business trip for the bi-annual American Society of Plumbing Engineers (ASPE) convention. Dad is a member of the executive board and a longtime active member of ASPE. He arrived in LB this past Wednesday for a series of executive committee meetings prior to the start of the convention. While he was out a dinner on Friday evening, he got up to go to the bathroom and while in there, he collapsed. He was quickly rushed to a nearby hospital where ER staff determined he had experienced a seizure. The doctors worked to get him stabilized and then performed a CAT scan to determine what was going on. It was at that point that the doctors discovered the presence of two lesions on his brain. The lesions were leaking blood onto his brain, which is likely what led to the seizure. Doctors started him on a round of medicines designed to relieve the pressure around his brain and also put him under heavy sedation to help keep him stable. All of this happened between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. eastern on Friday night/Saturday morning.

My mom was the first to get the call from some very good ASPE friends of dad's. She in turn contacted my sister and me. Needless to say, all of this came as a shock to everyone and we are still struggling to come to grips with what has happened. As of tonight, my mom, my sister, my sister's husband and my Aunt Betty are all in Long Beach to be here with my dad.

We've spent a good portion of the day today with my dad in his ICU room at St. Mary's Hospital in LB. He's shown some good signs of progress. The medical team has been reducing the amount of sedative he's been receiving in order to begin to wean him off of it. As a result, he's had a few periods of alertness where he was able to open his eyes and respond to our questions by nodding his head. Unfortunately, he's quite a bit of a fighter to the point that he wants to flail about and try to pull out his breathing tube so he's having to be restrained. We found out late today that the doctors are planning to take out the breathing tube in the morning to see if he can sustain oxygen levels on his own. If he can do that, they will keep the breathing tube out and he will be able to move on to the next step which is an MRI. As one of the doctors put it to us today, the MRI will be like a Hi-def image of his brain so they can get a good look at the lesions. They believe that the lesions are metastasized, which essentially means that they travelled to the brain from somewhere else in the body. Once they know more about whether or not this is the case, they will know more about potential treatment options.

Here's a quick note about the background of dad's cancer history. About 3 1/2 years ago, dad had a mole removed from his back and there were some concerns that there might be skin cancer present. So, he had it checked out. It turned out to be melanoma and he had several lymph nodes removed from under his left arm. Those showed a low occurrence of melanoma. At that time, the doctor felt positive that he had successfully resolved the issue and all was well. Then in 2007, he had an occurrence of prostate cancer and as a result, had his prostate removed. Lastly, a few months ago, he had a follow-up visit to check in on his melanoma and the PET scan turned up something suspicious. Further investigation showed that the melanoma had resurfaced, this time under his right arm. So, he went back over to UNC-CH to have more lymph nodes removed (26 in all) and only two of those turned up signs of cancer, and those were at stage 3, which is a good situation to be in. So, we thought that all had looked good and he was on the road to recovery. He was to begin a round of treatments that would take a year and were designed to make sure that all of the cancer was eradicated from his body. Those treatments were to begin after he returned from this trip to Long Beach.

So, here we are in a place that we did not think we would be in just a few days ago and my dad is just down the street in a hospital and fighting for his life. Plainly put-- this stinks. However, as many of you know, our faith in God is strong. We don't know what His plan is for my dad and in this situation, but we know that He is in control and ultimately, He will use this for His glory.

Many of you have asked what you can do to help. At this point, there is one thing that will help above all others-- prayer. I don't know where you are in your faith, but we need as much prayer as possible.

Thank you for your love and support. It means more than you will ever know.