Very sad days recently. Dave's father took a turn for the worst. The doctor suspects he had another possible series of strokes and she says he is likely to pass away soon. When Dave heard this news, he immediately flew out to be with his dad.
Dave's sister Sara has been there this whole time so I'm glad Dave can be with her as they say goodbye to their father.
Sad and awful days, these.
I started writing this days ago, six days to be precise. I just never came back to it until now. I have therapy in about forty minutes, so I thought I would just jump on until then and do as much updating as I can. This is just a small sample of all the stuff that's been going on.
Dave's father was moved to a skilled nursing facility six days ago and has been receiving the kinds of therapy (occupational and speech) they offer there. If things go well, he will able to be moved to a rehab facility, hopefully one closer to Dave's sister in a month or two.
Kelly continues to do well. We heard from her via text the day after we heard from Kevin and they came home on the weekend. Out of respect for her privacy, I don't write very much about what's going on with Kelly, but I will say that I felt like I was holding my breath the whole time we were waiting to hear from her or Kevin. But things are good enough now that I can breathe again.
I can't take any bad news right now which means that I've pretty much stopped watching the news at all. We're going through such a dark time in the U.S. and the news is horrible and there's no respite, so when something bad happens closer to home, it's too much.
I had therapy last Thursday afternoon before Dave came home. I like my new therapist. She's very...connected, I guess. I had to think for a long time to come up with that word. It's a style that I'm not used to, because touchy-feely therapy is not for me, but she's good with connections as well as with boundaries and distance. I like that she actually listens to me--you'd be surprised, some therapists do not--and she seems to want good things for me. So that's a plus.
During therapy, I talked about Dave's father. I talked about Chris (who I used to call X in my Diaryland diary). I talked about Dave and about Gray Kitty. I talked about loneliness and insomnia and Christmas. I talked about my brother and his isolation. I talked about the lessons I've learned from depression. I talked about my grandmother, growing up at the tail end of The Great Depression.
That's a lot for an hour, isn't it?
That brings us to today. Another therapy day. After, we'll pick up some dinner. I don't like to cook or do much of anything after therapy. I have almost enough energy after therapy for takeout and laying on the couch watching youtube videos. This is why I can't have morning therapy appointments. The whole day would shot if tried that.
So far today I've done some sewing (scrappy stars, four of them, with a scrappy border that will be the start of a medallion quilt) and cleaned some kitchen cabinets. I have a mild reaction to the cleaner (Murphy's Oil Soap), so I do a little bit at a time wearing gloves and stop when I start to get itchy. At this rate, I should be done cleaning cabinets around Christmas time. I also did some laundry and folded some clothes. Yesterday I tossed a bunch of old clothes, things I hadn't worn in ages and old torn, stretched out things. I always think I should donate clothes, but I wouldn't donate old stuff and we have a pretty full rag bag as it is. I swear, it seems like my wardrobe consists of about eight pairs of pajamas and two sets of clothes good enough to wear out of the house. This afternoon, I got out of my pajamas, took a shower and got into some clean pajamas.
My other plans for today are to email the surgeon's office and start looking for flights and hotels.
Dave and his sister have been with their father for the last several days. He is of course still hospitalized and will be for awhile yet. Dave says he's doing incrementally better day by day. He can say a few words and sentences now and can move his right arm a bit. The doctors don't want to give anyone false hope, because in situations like this things can change on a dime, but still I think it's good to keep a positive outlook.
They have been sitting with him in the hospital every day, talking to doctors and nurses and case workers and physical and occupational therapists, but yesterday they went out to his house for the first time. From how things look, Dave thinks that his father may have had a stroke as far back late Thursday (Thanksgiving) or early Friday. The doctors think he had more than one and Dave agrees, since his father was able to get up out of bed and move around the house (he had cut himself and left blood in many place in the house, marking a trail) until he had another stroke and fell in the kitchen and was unable to get up, where the sheriff found him on Sunday.
Dave had called his father on Thanksgiving, so we know he was okay early that evening. That was when he told Dave that he was spending Thanksgiving alone, making a frozen pizza for his dinner. I asked Dave why he hadn't gone to a friend's house or called us so that he could have flown out here and joined us for the holiday, but Dave said he didn't ask.
Dave will be home tomorrow, but his sister will stay on and help move their father to a nursing facility where they hope he will be able to get to a point to start rehab. Dave's sister will also start the process of getting his house in order, first to make it through what could be a harsh winter, then to prepare it to be sold.
I am so sad about all this. Dave's father and sister were here about a month ago and we had begun planning an addition to our house for him to move into so that he would be near family. Dave was looking forward to having him here, as was I, and we were going to get a dog and everything was going to be great and we were all going to get along and there was going to be absolutely no problems whatsoever with our plan...
Right.
It's all so awful, all of it. The planning, the futility of planning, the hubris, the aging and sickness and death all of it just so heartbreakingly awful.
One of the things that Dave's father repeatedly said during their visit was that he would never want to be in a situation where he had to be taken care of 25/7 by strangers and he was planning on making an exit before then. He talked about his mother, Dave's grandmother, and how she had a stroke and felt it was so awful to have to be taken care of by strangers. Dave and his sister were uncomfortable with his talking about this--of course they were, who wouldn't be--and I once would have been, too, back before I worked with psychiatric patients and every single admission and evaluation I did included questions and conversations, thousands of them, about suicide and suicidal ideation. I pointed out to Dave's father that a lot of people thought the way he did--but the reality of it was that the majority of them miss their moment. It's not as easy as it sounds to bow out with a couple of handfuls of Seconal and what if you try it and live anyway, impaired, worse off than before. I was trying to gently say that there had to be other plans made, too, not for dying but for living in ways that we might think unacceptable even while--or maybe because--we cling so stubbornly, near arrogantly, to our independence and the fantasy of an easy exit.
I don't know what else to say.
I'll tell about our Thanksgiving, which happened long ago, in the before time.
Our Thanksgiving was lovely. My aunt Char hosted and did the majority of the cooking. We joined her and my cousins and my mother for a late lunch. My cousin Josh deep-fried a turkey and my aunt made stuffing and gravy and red chile (vegetarian and non-vegetarian versions of all of these), salad, corn, and brussels sprouts. She picked up a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie. My mother brought mashed potatoes. We brought Dave's homemade dinner rolls and mac and cheese as a vegetarian main dish. It was a lot of food for six people, but we did our best. We stayed for a few hours, eating and chatting and then came home with full bellies and lots of leftovers. Our small family grows smaller year by year, so it's even more important to make time to be together, especially on the holidays.
The other important thing that happened is that Kevin texted to let us know that Kelly was doing fine. There have been leaks either being made or unmade, it's hard to know anymore which is correct, but for the moment it's a done deal and everyone is able to breathe a little easier. Thank goodness.
I don't know if we can ask for anything more, but if we can, please let everyone heal quickly and well. Amen.
While Dave has been gone, we tried boarding Gray Kitty at our vets' office. He is a complicated kitty and needs medication two and sometimes three times a day and subcutaneous fluids every other day. Dave can do his meds alone, but it takes two of us to give him sub-q fluids, so that is a big reason why we boarded him at the vet. After two nights, one of the vets called Dave in the morning and said that Gray Kitty was losing weight. He wasn't eating or drinking or using the litter box and he had ripped out one his claws (they say they don't know how it happened but suggested that he might have been trying to get out of his enclosure). So I went to pick him up. It means that he'll have to go without one round of his morning meds--I can't pill him by myself and Dave won't be home until later--but he is home. He came in and went straight to his water bowl and then settled down on his heated pad (we had sent it with him but I set it up here again as soon as we walked in the door). After awhile he had a couple of treats, accepted a few pets, and used the litter box. Then he ate a few more treats and a bit of both wet and dry food. So that nightmare is over for him for the moment.
It's almost 4:30 in the morning and I'm not sleeping but GK is, on his heating pad near his comfortingly full water bowl. Yes, I know I should be sleeping too, but that's not how things work anymore.
Christmas is in twenty-one days. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
Dave's father had a stroke, sometime between Thanksgiving and Sunday. He lives alone, so we don't really know when it happened, but on Sunday when Dave and his sister were supposed to talk to him, he wasn't answering his phone. After a couple of hours, Dave's sister was worried and called the sheriff in the nearest town to check on him. The sheriff found him and called an ambulance and he was taken to the nearest big hospital, 45 minutes away.
He's unable to speak or move his right side, but he recognizes Dave and Sara and can swallow enough to be fed.
It's awful.
I'll write more later.
Also last week I had an appointment with the N.P. on Tuesday and the pulmonologist on Thursday. PT and therapy on Friday.
This week I have PT today, the P.A. at the dermatologists office on Wednesday. My therapist is taking the week off for Thanksgiving so no therapy this week.
