HOME!

My dad is HOME!
He is no longer in the above pictured hospital, which is the VA in Little Rock. Although they are very over crowded (4 patients in one room), they have amazing staff, that is sometimes chaotic, but always caring.

His oncologist, Ahmad Safar, is a great dr. In fact, he received his Masters in Medical Sciences at Harvard Medical School. He is also Assistant Professor of Medicine, in the Department of Medicine Division of Hematology and Oncology at UAMS. (Where both my babies were born prematurely) Not only does he have an outstanding background when it comes to his education, his bedside manner is exactly what you would want. My dad has never been treated badly in the least by the oncology department at the Arkansas VA, or the one in Jackson Mississippi where he fought his first bout with cancer.

Most people don't know, but my dad (pictured above from his Army days) would not have known he had cancer the first time if he had not lost his job of (35 years) at Burlington, and therefore needed to sign up for VA benefits when his work related insurance ran out. He had no outward symptoms. If they had not required a physical to "sign up" I don't know if we would have known before it was too late. So I thank God for the VA, and hope you will urge anyone you know with a history of colon cancer to GET A COLONOSCOPY! It is the third most common form of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western world. Colorectal cancer causes 655,000 deaths worldwide per year, including about 16,000 in the UK, where it is the second most common site (after lung) to cause cancer death.