After a week in the hospital, dad has passed away. The first couple days were scary and information was not all there. We soon got a “grave” prognosis and the next couple days were hard and we had to make some hard decisions. We took him off of his ventilator and he proceeded to breathe on his own. His doctor didn’t think he’d be able to do that, so the word miracle was tossed around, but we all knew we’d need a handful of miracles if he were to make it. After a couple more days, with dad breathing on his own, he started to weaken. We got a call at 2am that he had slowed down dramatically and that we should come in. We did and we watched him go out in slow waves… pulse weakening all the way in the 20-30 bpm range and then climbing steadily back into the 100s… I sort of felt like each wave was washing a little more of him away, but after sitting there in the room with him for 10 hours, having only an hour of sleep in us, we gave in to our bodies desires and went back to the hotel room to get some sleep. We were out in our beds for about 5 hours and then we got up and started showering one by one. In between my turn and my sister’s turn, our brother called us and told us that he was gone. We headed up there and said our goodbyes and then headed back to Mom’s house to talk and plan and make calls. Still trying to handle it all, but everyone here is being really great for everyone else.
Monthly Archive for September, 2005
This has been crossposted at all my blogs and sent in a mass eMail. It is my semi-annual life update. I figured enough changes had happened and were happening that it was time for one of these, but I hesitated on sending it for a while due to various reasons, some of which being the delicate nature of the band-related stuff and the sort of depressing mood of the whole thing… the original draft was way more depressed than I feel, so it took some creative editing to get it close to the way i actually feel.
I commonly have 12 hour days of work. Between the few departments of my various employers, I occasionally end up with a completely full day. Today is one of those days, as is tomorrow and the next day. Usually, this is no problem for me. Some of the work is easy and some requires some heavy thought; Usually a day like today is half and half and there’s a short break in between where I can collect myself and get some food in me. Today, however, I picked up my cell phone to check my messages during my break and got two very disturbing messages. The first was from my brother, asking me to help him confirm which hospital Dad was in, as he was flying up ASAP and there was some confusion. The second was from my mom, explaining that Dad had fallen yesterday and was taken by ambulance to the hospital… he had survived the night, but was in ICU and in a coma.
Now I’m finishing off the last hour of my 12 hour day and dreading what happens next. The next few hours, the next few days… just afraid and numb.
I just got back from a shameless trip to my parents’ house to do some free laundry and beg for money, since I am broker than broke and don’t want the electricity or gas shut off. It didn’t really go as planned. I know things aren’t perfect at Casa de Voegtlin lately with my grandfather, slowly slipping into dementia, and my uncle, a handful at times, both there to be taken care of, but I sort of thought that between Mom and Dad, they could handle it, and with the nurse Pam that comes every now and then and the adult day care taking up most of the days for grandpa… it would be quite manageable. What I keep forgetting, or denying, or something, is that Dad has cancer. Nothing is easy for him… and we’re in a bad phase right now with lots of chemo treatments and surgeries and painkillers and lack of appetite and weight loss and energy loss. He’s pretty off right now, and he knows it. At one point during my visit, we had a little sit-down talk, simply about how hard things are for him right now and how much he is messing up. If you thought I was out of character lately with my instability, you should take a look at the great bossman.
I wanted to offer my help. And I did run some errands for mom to get some dinner supplies and other groceries and kitchen items as well as put some gas in a rental car and such… but that’s about the limit of my abilities right now. Hopefully, that kind of help is all they need, because I can’t offer much in the way of emotional support. I felt totally emotionally crippled, just seeing Dad so weak and Mom so frazzled from the “three ring circus” going on around her. I felt useless and ineffective, just like I do with most of my life lately, but this was somehow different. Maybe because I’d never felt that way about home before.
Currently under construction … I know you’re all anxiously awaiting the return of this site, right?
