I apologize - I lost track of this thread and am now reading the rest of the replies. Thanks Inny, Roe, Debbie, Rap, others.

I'm at my parents' house again this weekend. It is heartbreaking. My dad is one neuron short of being a vegetable. He has barely acknowledged my presence and is in bed all day, every day, with the exception of about 20 minutes every few hours to eat, then back to bed. I think a lot of it is depression, and who can blame him, but both he and my stepmom are completely against anti-depressants, despite my pleas. She is frazzled and exhausted, but continues to clean, scrub, cook, tidy... I guess it's her way of coping, but she gets so upset if my dad spills something or leaves his clothes on the floor. I sang the praises of how meds can help with anxiety but it's just out of the question. She doesn't "need" meds. Ok. Fine. She's not letting me help much either, so I'm sitting here trying to figure out what I can do to be helpful instead of flying out here 9 hours each way to sit around with my teeth in my head.

My dad's behavior is mortally saddening. He is incontinent now and can't talk. As I said, he has barely acknowledged that I'm here and all he wants to do is eat and sleep. Every attempt I've made to engage him in conversation results in either grunts or one-word answers. During meals, his hands are shaking so badly that he gets more food on him than in him, but he refuses to let anyone help. And the anti-inflammatory steroids that he is taking are making him ravenous, so he's gaining a lot of weight, which in turn makes it harder for my stepmom to help him in and out of the bathtub, etc. Nor will he use any of the medical equipment she got him (cane, walker, commode, bathtub seat, etc). She has had to hide his medication from him because she caught him taking pills outside of his schedule, and my brother caught him drinking liquor straight out of the bottle in the middle of the night the other night (so they hid that too). He has also taken to walking through the house without clothes on, regardless of whether other people are in the house. He doesn't seem to recognize whether it is inappropriate or not.

My brother was here this week and although he is normally a very level-headed guy, he's turned quite irrational over this situation. He's been accusing my stepmom of just wanting my dad to die so that he's no longer a burden, but this week he got to experience first-hand my dad's refusal to consider cancer treatment. He thought she was lying to him before. I, in turn, have been defending her, because she is dealing with this essentially alone, and it is very, very stressful for her. Hopefully now my brother will start to accept what we can't control, seeing how my dad is not even open to seeing an oncologist.

We are flying my aunt here in the next week or two. She is 86 and lives in Hungary. She has health problems of her own, but when we told her about my dad, she didn't hesitate to say that she is coming out to be with him. It's very sweet. However, it also means that my stepmom will be taking care of an 84 and an 86 year old, and I know she is going to go bizerk. I talked to her about getting home health care but she isn't feeling like it's going to help.

Today my stepmom and I dealt with the legal stuff. I am quite irritated because a few years ago, I nagged my parents to get their estate plans documented, because my stepmom had no will, and my dad's will was written when I was 3 and my mom was still alive. He has always been very adamant that my brother and I are to receive the vast majority of his estate out of respect for our mother, and although it seems contrary to my own best interest, I felt it was unfair to my stepmom who has put up with so much for the last 20 years, so I had been trying to convince him to give her more support than what he had been planning. But my dad wanted such a complicated series of small divided trusts that the lawyer they were seeing just couldn't finalize it - it wasn't making legal or tax sense to go to the level of complexity that my dad was asking. My parents live comfortably, but they aren't rich by any means. Anyway, I flew out here in April to meet with them and the lawyer to nail it down, which didn't happen. Or rather, it did, but my dad never gave the final ok to write up the wills and so it was left hanging, again. It turns out that my stepmom took them to a new attorney this week and had identical wills drawn. I question my dad's mental state to be making decisions like this, but then again I really can't blame her for not wanting to be screwed over completely. I called the original attorney and asked him to send the final invoice, stating that my parents weren't going to finish it with him, and it ended up being almost $3,000, which I am now stuck with. The new wills specify that my dad's entire estate goes into a trust to be used solely for my stepmom's support until she dies, then it is to be divided evenly between me and my brother. It's his estate and his decision, obviously, but I'm really uncomfortable with the trust arrangement. Basically, she can live in the residence of her choosing, and my brother and I are responsible for paying for all of the furnishings, repairs, maintenance, taxes, improvements. If she decides she wants to move, his will states that we must sell that residence and buy her a new one. I wish he would have just figured out some percentage split and we all could have gone our happy way. As it stands now, it's just going to be a logistical hassle for the next 20 or so years (she's 20 years younger than he is), and then we get whatever she hasn't spent.

The last part that hurt is that my stepmom said that my dad really wants my brother to inherit his Bosendorfer grand piano. That was new information for me. I don't care about it from an inheritance/monetary standpoint (although it's worth about $85k), but my brother never took piano lessons, yet I was forced to take them until I was 15. My dad always said that he wanted me to be a professional pianist (despite the fact that my musical skills are more mechanical than talent). Now, I've mentioned here before that I don't have a terrific relationship with my dad, but symbolically, it hurt to hear that. Playing piano was probably the only memory I have of my dad trying to be close to me when I was growing up.

Neither of them have expressed any interest in my pregnancy. Actually, the only thing either of them said was last night. My stepmom said "you're going to look cute once you start showing". Um, I *am* showing - I'm not normally this big. I know that she meant it in a nice way, but it still hurt. I know that I'm being overly sensitive, though, so I'm trying not to react.

Wow - reading over this post, I guess I can conclude that I'm hurting right now. Ouch. Ugh.

Anyway, thanks again for all of your kind words, and mostly for just letting me write this. It's helping me process my feelings to get it on ?paper? ?screen?. My T's billing rate just went up to $150/hour and my insurance doesn't cover it, so I've stopped going for now. I don't have time anyway - I'm stretched so thin