Brother, I'm Dying

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I found out I was pregnant the same day that my father’s rapid weight loss and chronic shortness of breath were positively diagnosed as end-stage pulmonary fibrosis.

It was a hot morning in early July 2004. I took a six thirty a.m. flight from Miami to accompany my father on a visit to a pulmonologist at Brooklyn’s Coney Island Hospital that afternoon. I’d planned to catch up on my sleep during the flight, but cramping in my lower abdomen kept me awake.

I interpreted the cramps as a sign of worry for my father. In the past few months his breathing had grown labored and loud and he’d been hospitalized three times. During his most recent hospital stay, he had been referred to a pulmonologist, who’d since performed a new battery of tests.

My father picked me up at the airport at nine a.m. We hadn’t seen each other in a month. Two years before, in August 2002, I had married and moved to Miami, where my then fiancé was living. Fearing my father’s disapproval, I hadn’t announced my intention to leave New York until a month before the wedding when my father summoned me to his room for a chat.

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