RRY II - AKA DAD

"Rudy, they're working on your father!" came the terrified, panic stricken voice of my mother, through my Bluetooth earpiece.  I answered the call on my mobile phone on the morning of November 4, 2010. "Who? What?" I replied in confusion over what I had just heard. "Paramedics are here working on your father.”  "He's dead Rudy.  He's dead.  Oh my God he's dead OH MY GOD HE’S DEAD!!!" She wailed.

"Hi mom. I'm on my way driving CB to school right now.I'll call you back in about 4 minutes once I drop her off," I cheerfully responded with my 15-year-old daughter in the passenger seat. I didn't want CB to have to start her day overhearing this kind of conversation. No one should have to start their day like this.

I dropped her off at school and called mom back as soon as the car door shut.

I finally got a hold of mom on her mobile phone after trying her home phone. The ambulance had left, and she was en route to the hospital.   “Are they taking him to Holy Spirit Hospital?” I inquired.  “No,” she replied.   “People go there to die. I told them to take him to Harrisburg hospital” she explained. "I don't think it will make a difference," I thought to myself.

"What happened?" I asked. Amidst sobs and sighs, she proceeded to describe to me the events of the previous 12 hours. She explained how just before bed, dad felt very uncomfortable with indigestion. I immediately thought to myself, "heart attack.”  But that did not make sense as dad was "healthy as a horse"  outside of his multiple sclerosis. She told me how he was unable to get comfortable and was tossing and turning all night, not being able to sleep with the discomfort. Subsequently, she wasn't able to sleep either, up with him trying to relieve his pain.

A little after four in the morning, she finally fell asleep from exhaustion. When she awoke approximately one hour later, he was lying there beside her, motionless, unresponsive, not breathing, froth covering his lips, with an occasional bubble forming, then popping. Paramedics came and began attempting to resuscitate him, removing approximately 2 L of blood from his stomach.

By the time she had finished recounting the previous night’s events, she had reached the hospital and had parked the car.  She just sat, paralyzed, afraid of what she would find when she went in to the emergency room.

As mom walked into the emergency room, I walked into my office. I closed my door and sat. I sat with my memories of dad. Even though I had not yet been told he was dead, I knew.

I thought about the time when, as a child, maybe five or six, he would be lying on the bed in his darkened bedroom, unable to lift his head off the pillow without being overcome with severe vertigo and violent retching. Mom would quickly rush me past his room, attempting to protect me from the sight. Those were my first experiences with multiple sclerosis, a disease that dad had lived with, at that time unbeknownst to me, until his death.

I thought about the time he and his dad, my grandfather, Rudolph Raymond Yanuck Senior, 40 years ago, were in the attic rafters of the new construction at 901 Charles St, the house my dad designed and mostly built himself.  Both men wearing t-shirts, covered in pink flakes of fiberglass from the insulation they were installing.  My grandfather holding the stump of a lit stogie tightly between his cheek and teeth.  Dad laughingly saying, “Pap, you’re gonna set us all on fire and burn the house down with that thing.”

I thought about the time when, as a teenager, we were playing baseball. I was pitching, he was catching. He got hit in the head by the baseball he couldn't see coming. This was the first time that I found out he had multiple sclerosis. It was the last time we threw baseball together.

I thought about the time he walked with a cane, across the college campus, to my induction ceremony  into Phi Beta Kappa, senior year.  I thought about the time that he attended my med school graduation in a motorized scooter. I also thought about the time he attended my wedding in the same scooter the following week.  I thought about how, after my wedding, the visits with my father became fewer and fewer, and further and further apart.

I thought about 2 L of blood in his stomach. Wondering what could have caused it. The only plausible explanation, I thought, was an undiscovered peptic ulcer eroding through the posterior wall of his stomach into the splenic artery, a major arterial branch. My suspicions were correct and corroborated by the death certificate, which read, "cardiac arrest secondary to ischemia due to severe anemia caused by peptic ulcer disease. "  An autopsy was never performed for confirmation.

Days after my dad’s funeral, I began wondering, now that my grandfather, Rudolph Raymond Yanuck, Senior, and my father Rudolph Raymond Yanuck, Junior were dead, was I still the third?