Thanks everyone for the excellent medical information on Hospice issues. I'm going to pass it on to my Mom and hopefully they can find some other options available for him. To me dialysis isn't a treatment for cure. The man has no functioning kidneys so it's become simply a necessity of life - much like eating food, drinking water and breathing air. If he stopped getting his blood cleansed three times a week, he'd die quicker than if he stopped eating.
As for taking a leave of absence from work, unfortunately financially that's not possible for me. However, the upside is I do have quite a bit of vacation time saved up and I plan to use it to make some frequent trips down to spend some time with my Dad and try and give my Mom a break as well.
I hope I have a relaxing weekend - I'm certainly going to try. Unfortunately, the stuff with my Dad is only part of what I'm currently dealing with - the other stuff is just even more depressing/disturbing and I'm not interested in putting it in writing at the moment.
