Saying a Prayer for my Dad

Bob and Shirley Legros

Flower for you Dad from our garden

Updade April 17
All is patched up. Healing is beginning again. The physicians now say my dad will be in the hospital for "weeks" before they can let him go home. This also means weeks before he can begin radiation and chemo therapies. There's a long road ahead but there's lots of support along the way. And that's the way it goes with this affliction so many are affected by. Thanks so much for all the support sent his way; he may never know how many people are silently cheering.    


Update April 15
Enthusiasm for a speedy recovery was launched a little too soon. On Wednesday my dad's interior jugular ruptured and he was rushed back to surgery to stop internal bleeding. We don't know what caused it. The doctors managed to get to it in time and he is still recovering in ICU. This surgery meant having to reopen the staples and stitches in place after the laryngectomy. So his stay is set back to day 1 until he heals well enough to be released. Fortunately he is fine, but a little unnerved. As if the first surgery wasn't traumatic enough. I know my father is a solid and brave man; now I know this more than ever.    

Update April 07
Yeah... I was hoping it would go this way. The speech therapist paid my dad a visit today. It was his first trial with a temporary artificial larynx - the Cooper Rand intraoral device that lets patients like my father speak. Later on, after chemo and radiation, he'll have a second operation and get a voice prosthesis that will allow him actual speech. For now, the CR device will have to do.

Two days after his complete laryngectomy, the speech therapist coached him on how to articulate vowels, to try out consonants, where and how to place the device. Then, she encouraged him to try to speak. What was his first word? "Anticonstitutionellement". The longest word in the French language. Within minutes, according to reliable witnesses, he had the therapist bedazzled. She'd never seen anyone adapt this quickly. So ... yeah. This is the final installment on the 'dad' saga. He's going to be just fine. Chronic overachiever....  : D         


Update April 6. My dad's surgery went extremely well. He's so strong and healthy that they are moving him out of intensive care two days earlier than anticipated. He's past the toughest hurtle and is on his way to healing. Thank you for your kind thoughts and messages.    



Some of my friends already know that my dad is sick. A few weeks back he was diagnosed with advanced laryngeal cancer. Initially his doctors thought it would be treatable with radiation and chemotherapy. Two weeks ago we learned this was no longer an option.

Tomorrow, Tuesday April 5, my dad will undergo a 7-hour surgical procedure to have a complete laryngectomy. This surgery will involve removing his vocal chords, several lymph nodes and some cartilage from his neck. He will also have a tracheotomy that will leave him unable to speak and breathing through a stoma at the base of his neck.

If any of you are so disposed, I would like to ask you to join me in some part of your day tomorrow between 4:30 - 11:30 a.m.(Pacific) or 7:30 - 2:30 p.m. (Quebec, Ontario) in sending positive thoughts to my dad while he undergoes this surgery. I'm planning to sit in thought within these hours until I know he's through this procedure. This is an exceptionally traumatic surgery and I'm calling on all my exceptional friends and family to bolster up my dad's spirit.

My sister Nadine and my dad's wife Shirley will drive him to the hospital at 6:30 in the morning. From there the odyssey begins. Seven hours in surgery starting at 7:30 a.m., 3 days in intensive care, 10 days in the hospital and then home for at least 7 weeks of recovery. And then radiation, chemo and speech therapy. Later, when he's able, he will learn to speak with a prosthetic voice that is - frankly - a technological miracle.

I thank every incarnation of all that is divine that we live in Canada where my father can be treated and cured in a hospital paid for by all of us. Viva medicare!!!    Viva my dad!!!!     My fathers wish? That he be golfing this August on his 75th birthday.