About two and a half weeks ago, I found out that my boyfriend's father has pancreatic cancer. Our families are very close friends, we were all neighbors and I grew up with he and his sisters next door. Over a month ago, his dad has been in the hospital. He was admitted thinking it was jaundice, later had multiple surgeries, sustained heavy blood loss, but finally came home about a week and a half ago. It has been a hard month for all of us. During this time, his mother has been reaching out for support from my mother. I caught wind that there was something more serious going on, and my mom finally told me the whole story which includes a frightening prognosis - the seriousness of this, I didn't know until today. Of course this is devastating, but what is harder is that neither my boyfriend nor his siblings know. As far as he is concerned, his father is out of the hospital and everything will be fine once he regains his strength. In reality, the doctors are waiting for him to recover before he begins chemo and radiation therapy in about two months. My mom and I think that his mother is waiting to tell her kids until the official prognosis, which is in about two weeks. Until then, I think (or at least am almost sure) that it is not my place to tell him. Here is where things get more complicated..
Earlier this week we made a big (temporary 7 month) move to Hawaii. His family lives across the country and he wasn't planning on going home for Christmas because of the extremely expensive plane ticket (the same happened last year when he chose to spend the holidays with me and my family on the west coast). Now that I know about his dad, I know that it's more important than ever for my boyfriend to be with him. As much as I am hoping for the best, this could potentially be their last holiday together. I brought it up today encouraging him that he should go. I told him it would be helpful for his dad's recovery from the hospital to have all the family there. He got defensive saying how he's still looking for a job and he still has to get on his feet from the big moving expense. His family is always concerned about money and it's true - under normal circumstances they would look down on him for coming home, seeing it as a frivolous expense. Clearly, if he knew the entire situation, he would go home to his family.
Even though we both saved for this move, neither of us have that much money at the moment. This was supposed to be a fun 7 month adventure and - of course - we would have never anticipated something like this. With plane flights jumping up each week, it could easily be 800+ for a ticket by the time his mom tells him (if she decides to tell him right after the seeing the oncologist). I know his mother, and I can see where she is coming from. She's still just processing this information. I just don't want him to miss this opportunity but I really don't think it's my place to tell him what's going on with his father. It's not even fair that I know before he does. I'm having a hard enough time dealing with this news, I can only imagine what it will be like for him. I know that he'll visit home once he finds out, but the longer he waits the more of a financial bind this can put him in. What do I do?
Thank you and my deepest concern and sympathies go out to all of you who are also dealing with a recent diagnosis.