My mother died July 19, 2007 from CHF and complications from diabeties. 2 days before her passing, she was just having difficulty breathing and on oxygen. The night one night she call my name and I jumped up and ran to her and she was soaking wet and felt "something" as she explained in her heart (a blood clot had also entered her heart), I had an ambulance rush her to the emergency room and she seems as she might pull through, but her lungs continued to fill with fluid and the more they took out the more the body would produce. My mother was able to walk, function, but towards the end was just too weak. The fluid filled her lungs and she couldn't breath and as a result suffered a massive heart attack. She was rushed to the CCICU where she was breathing through a machine, but due to the lack of oxygen to her brain, she suffered perminant brain damange and was purplish gray in color. She never made it out alive, but was surrounded by her entire family when she passed. There are no words for the experience of losing my beloved mom. She was only 70 and life will never be the same. You will be able to tell by his inability to breath normally, swelling of feet, feeling weak and the shortness of breath will be so intense that we would yell for a nurse, because she couldn't breath at all. All you can do is be there and support him and put the rest in the doctors hands and God's hands.....Judy
I am sorry you are having such a hard time dealing with your father's plight, and since I'm not a doctor, I don't know if there is anything that can be done to make him live longer.
However.......
If your father is going to die anyway, why take the few pleasures away from him that he enjoys?
I had a friend who smoked his entrie life, then he contracted lung cancer. He confided to me that he loved to smoke, and he wished everyone would just leave him alone about it. However, they nagged at him, told him how stupid he was, and just plain made the last few months of his life miserable, and the outcome was the same, except for he died on everyone else's terms, instead of his own. I don't think that was a fair way for him to be treated.
It sounds like you are in denial, and no one can blame you for that, BUT if your father wants to smoke or drink, and is dying anyway, then please leave him alone and let him live his life, his way, for how ever long he has, because the truth is, the outcome is going to be the same, regardless.....and even if he can get a couple of more months, or so, if he is miserable, what has been accomplished? There is more to life than longevity, and when you are terminal, enjoying whatever you want is all there is left.
So, no matter how painful it is for you, or the rest of the family, let your father have what he wants, as much as he wants, and let him enjoy what he has left. You have the rest of your life to find happiness, your father doesn't, so don't take what he does have away from him.
I'm sorry if I've said things that you didn't want to hear, but for your own good you need to work through the denial, and come to grips with the inevitable, otherwise the loss is going be a lot harder for you when it does happen.
My prayers are with you.