September 23rd - The Talk (Hospice)

Dad was asleep when I arrived this morning. When I woke him up he said he had not slept too well because he had a pain in his side.  I told him it was time for breakfast and he said "Okay, let's do it". He got up and headed to the bathroom.  As I looked around his room, I noticed he had a portable toilet next to his bed. I remembered that yesterday at breakfast he had told me that he thought he had scratched himself or something on his left side.  I got a clean change of clothes and figured I would get to see if there was anything going on when he took off his shirt.

When he came out of the bathroom he told me he was not changing his shirt, "It's Sunday, no one will notice". "Okay"' I said, "but you'll have to lift your shirt so I can make sure there is are no scratches or sores".  His abdomen his was distended, but there were no marks or anything.

At breakfast he had scrambled eggs, sausage, apple juice, and coffee. There was also half a strawberry.  I chopped up the eggs and as he was eating I noticed he picked up the strawberry. He was going to put the end with the green leaf in his mouth and I said, "That's the strawberry", he replied with a smile, "Oh, I thought that was the sausage."  He ate most of the sausage and about half the eggs.  He didn't seem to have as much trouble swallowing as yesterday.

On the way back to the room one of the nurses remarked that it was good to see him up. She told me about the pain in his side and that she had given him a pain pill.  We took the morning meds in the hallway while he was sitting up. I was afraid if he laid down it would be harder to swallow and he would be harder to wake up when Tom came by.

Much to my surprise, when we got back inside the room, he asked if he could sit up. I said "Do you want to sit outside?", and he said "sure".   We had one of those moments I'll cherish forever sitting out in front of the roses just watching the world go by. We sat in silence most of the of 45 minutes, although he would occasionally ask about something in my life or comment on the excessive noise the crows were producing.

Tom came out and we had "the talk". We explained as clearly as we could.  There were a few tears shed. I wish I could say I definitively knew where he stood, but I was a bit confused as he said he would like to go home and continue the battle.  Tom and I spoke much later about this and agreed we should let the doctor at Rosewood do the evaluation as an impartial observer, and then let the hospice administrator also do a private evaluation so our prejudices don't overly influence Dad's decision.

At about 10:30 Dad said he wanted to take an hour nap before lunch. Tom and I went out to the patio and talked about how it went. I then called Ranae and Tom made a call and I started this blog post. It was 11:45, and thinking it would take 20 minutes or so to get Dad ready for lunch, we headed back to his room.

His bed was empty!  The bathroom?  Empty?  Where did he go?  His roomate said "He went tooling out of here on his walker and that he would let me know how lunch was!"  Sure enough, we made the turn at the hallway and there he was.  We got him seated and they brought out his food. He ate a little more than breakfast AND had half of his cookie---which he said "wasn't very good". Tom asked him if he wanted to come over for Sunday night dinner and he nodded "sure".

One the way out Tom complimented another resident, "My those are lovely slippers!"  She had no idea what he was talking about, but Dad responded, "Thank you!  You can't go wrong for $10".  Ah, the joys of conversing with the hard of hearing!

Tom had taken Dad's suspenders off for his nap and Dad asked me to hold his pants up on the way back.  "My pants fell down on the way here. I'm sure it's nothing they haven't seen before, but I don't want to put them through it again."  When we got back to the room he wanted to sit outside again. We sat for about 30 minutes before he went in to get his IV and some shut eye.

Tom and I went over to the pool and had some lunch.  There was a family there having a 91st birthday for one of the residents.  At about 2:45 we went to check in on Dad.  Dad's roommate was having a "picnic" in his room and Dad was sound asleep.  The nurse came in to check his O2 levels and pulse, 96 and 72 respectively.  Dad said, "What a pretty nurse!"  Wait!  Was this the same guy who could not tell a sausage from a strawberry just seven hours ago?

Dad asked about our lunch and we told him about the 91 year old's birthday.  We then asked if he still wanted to go to Tom's for Sunday dinner and he said "yes" and that he wanted Chinese, "his favorite".  Good luck with that one Tom, or should I say Mary.  My day was done, I kissed him on the cheek and said "Good-bye".