Tuesday, October 30, 2007

147 this may be it, revisited

My dad's been running a temperature of 102 for several days. The nursing home thought it was just another UTI but the infection is not responding. They wanted to take him back to that horrible hospital. My mom and I said NO. I was on my way up there for a routine visit when my mom called. She told me to make the decisions.
The bottom line is, he's got some kind of massive infection. They don't know where or what. They are waiting for lab work to come back so they can see exactly what antibiotic to use. He is not swallowing his food at all, nor is he drinking. So I approved an IV for fluids and medicine, antibiotics, painkillers and that's it. I told them to take him off all his heart medicine and his Alzheimer's medicine--at this point, it's a total waste to give it to him. No feeding tube, no transport to the hospital.
I feel better being able to make decisions, even if they are wrong.
Like on Sunday, he was unaware of my presence today. I tried to talk to him, to tell him the Red Sox won the world series again, but he just grimaced and pushed my hand away from his arm. When I was talking to the 2 nurses about his future care, he seemed sometime to try to aim his eyes at my voice but he couldn't seem to focus or connect in any way. I tried to hold his hand but he pulled away.
He was in bed, his arms drawn up like a burn victims, half curled up, his head to one side. His right eye is drooping again, hardly open. He is so thin his forearms are bigger than his upper arms. He's still got his tan on his lower arms from this summer.
You know what makes me most sad? My whole life the Red Sox, my dad's favorite baseball team, were only in the World Series once, in 1987, and they lost (to Chicago, I believe). Then after my dad got diagnosed, they not only made it to the World Series again, they won in 2004 for the first time in 86 years. My dad hardly reacted. This was a man who would throw wadded up napkins at the screen whenever someone scored against the Red Sox or prevented them from scoring. They won, and he just sat there. Now they've won again, and he doesn't care. I'm no sports fan; I think it's stupid. But it was always important to my dad, and my memories of summer are filled with scratchy AM radio broadcasts of baseball games and Amile motor oil commercials (I think that's how it's spelled). All my life my dad wanted the Red Sox to win. And now it happened twice and as far as he's concerned it may as well have not happened at all.

1 comment:

Mauigirl said...

So sad that he isn't able to respond even when his Red Sox won the Series. I really felt the loss of my father the most when he stopped appreciating things I knew he would have appreciated when he was his normal self.