Dad comes home tomorrow (or the next day)

My brothers and I decided to bring dad home today. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. That’s up to the medical professionals. They have to transfer him from doctor care to hospice care. End-of-life treatment.

We’re hoping to get a little of him back before he’s gone. Being at home might help. Listening to his cheesy old records and waking up to horrible wallpaper he and our mom chose themselves can’t hurt.

Today I asked the hospice nurse to drop by. She’s the only medical professional he trusts these days. When we suggest a possible course of action, he asks: “Have you talked to Erica?”

He’s not even in her care at this point. She can’t make decisions for him until he is. But she’s answered every call and has visited him in the nursing home twice. A truly dedicated person with deep feelings, maybe too deep for the work she’s doing.

When I told one of my brothers she was recommending more medication, less treatment, he pointed out that her role is to be a gateway. An angel of death of sorts. True. But dad’s at that gate. He’s not fighting it.

Radiation’s upset and confused him, so tonight I’m preparing his living room for a hospital bed. I dug out the records he loved. We’ll be hearing a lot of Ethel Merman around here for a while.

Hopefully that will bring him back a bit. It may kill me, but I survived it in my growing up years.

Just so you know, Ethel Merman is the best singer ever, because, according to dad:

“She can peal the paint off the back wall of the theater without a mic.”

That’s singing.

I also have my trombone with me. He paid for all the lessons, so he can’t complain when I start jamming along with Ethel.

“Care” vs. “Torture”

The last couple of days have been rough for my dad. He’s been a fiercely independent man for about 78 of his 84 years. Maybe 79. So, being wheeled around, asked how he slept, asked if he’s hungry, does he want the bed up, or down, does this hurt, do you have pain, and on and on and on … It bothers him. I don’t want to say it drives him crazy, but that’s how he’d put it.

When I was here a week and a half ago, I wrote this post. It was hard to know how to approach them. Now, there’s no difficulty. He needs: we (my brothers and I) give. Simple formula.

As far as hospice life goes, h e just wants everyone to leave him alone. But he needs people to help him. So he’s stuck. It’s very tough for him to deal with.

Today I went with him for the first of five radiation treatments. They put him on a gurney, drove him 10 miles to Englewood Hospital, made him wait for hours while they figured out what the hell they were doing, then took x-rays and generally “cared” for him, or tortured him. My brothers and I are mad about it, and need to take some steps to make sure that the rest of his time is better than this afternoon was.

A host of well-meaning doctors and nurses are out to care for my dad and others in his situation. There’s the very professional and charming radiology/oncology specialist we dealt with today. He impresses me to no end. So kind, sort of suave in an earnest way, obviously well meaning. His nurses, their nurses, the other medical people with letters after their names … all good people who want to ease pain in the only places they identify it: X-rays, bones, bodies.

But it’s getting hard to discriminate between care and torture. Whatever kindness the radiation did to his leg, the trip and the wait took from him through his emotions. He’s going to suffer, as most of us will. Choosing your suffering from a set of options is obviously far from easy. Choosing someone else’s suffering seems impossible. But dad, brothers, and I have to get together and pick the right pain. We’re all talking about it in the same way, so we’ll get there soon. But in the end, we want dad to say what he wants, when, and how.

We’re figuring it out, and hopefully will know what he wants and what’s best very soon.