Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters by Lt Col Mark Weber, Robin Williams

and it is bathed in a constant yellow ooze of digestive fluids that will require bandage changes every few hours or so—for the next fourteen weeks
.
    As I reach down to lift the bed sheet away from my abdomen, I can feel the tug of the tubes hooked to my right arm. I glance up at the four bags of fluid hanging from the IV stand. I cannot eat because my new plumbing can’t handle the pressure or the task of processing food. So two of the IV bags provide my only nutrition (total parenteral nutrition, or TPN)
.
    A fifth tube runs to a pump of Dilaudid (morphine times ten), which I can control. It comes with a detonator-like button I hit with my thumb when the pain becomes too much, which is about once an hour
.
    One of the side effects of the pain medication is the worst cotton mouth I’ve ever experienced in my life. But even worse than that is the fact that I can’t drink anything, and I feel thirsty twenty-four hours a day. The only water I’m allowed is ice chips or a moist sponge to keep my lips from drying out. In fact, I wouldn’t be allowed to drink until day twenty
.
    I think about how long it takes for a small cut on my hand to heal, and then I look down at that big incision. “There’s no freakin’ way, man,” I whisper
.
    *   *   *
    The weeks that preceded and followed this single day were pure torture. The heavy narcotics, massive abdominal wound, drains,and lack of nutrition made it difficult to get out of bed, let alone walk, pee, or pass gas.
    Every day, I would stand and plead with God for that pee to flow, because a nurse with a catheter was the only alternative if it didn’t. You can imagine how painful it might be to have a catheter pushed up my urethra three times a day to drain the bladder.
    “Can’t you just leave the thing in there instead of cramming it in and out every day?” I begged the nurse.
    “Not if you ever want to be able to pee again.”
    To keep my digestive system moving, prevent blood clots, and maintain any kind of muscle tone in my body, I was required to walk. I couldn’t physically do it as often as I needed to, but I tried my best. I shuffled in slow motion for a couple hundred feet or so, one painful step at a time.
    My inactivity and “sleepy” organs made it harder for fluids to drain, which resulted in about thirty-five pounds of water-weight gain. My legs and feet were swollen beyond recognition, and my testicles swelled to the size of oranges. (Noah, you laughingly referred to me as “Big Daddy” after you accidentally caught a glimpse when I climbed into bed.)
    The fluid retention also restricted my breathing, which led to fluid buildup on my lungs, all of which made it even harder to walk, sleep, or even think straight. I felt like a bloated deer tick. “Can’t you just drain the fluid off the lungs?” I asked.
    The answer was no; the procedure was too risky. “It would be better if you worked harder with those deep-breathing exercises ten times per day,” I was told.
    I laughed. I could barely perform them twice per day. Doctors eventually drained a two-liter bottle of fluid out of my lungs.
    *   *   *
    When you’re scared, you go with what you know. As a twenty-one-year career soldier and officer, I initially recoiled at the ideaof using words like
battle, war
, or any other military term to describe the cancer experience. There’s a “war” on everything these days—drugs, Christmas, obesity, illiteracy, poverty, terror—and we never seem to win.
    I also didn’t like the idea that a war reference implied an enemy and losers. Cancer wasn’t some foreign invader. It was the result of my own faulty immune system, and I sure wasn’t going to consider
myself
the enemy or a loser because of it. Plus, I had seen too many soldiers fight and lose real battles in combat with a real enemy. It just didn’t seem right to make the comparison.
    And yet, my resistance to using combat-related terms was short-lived. Nearly everyone who spoke to me