Why Was I Born?

I hate to use this blog to vent about my personal life, but guess what? It's my blog and my personal life and I need to write this stuff down, so you can either read it or ignore it. Don't matter to me. Writing is therapeutic, and I am being tested mightily on this week before the 54th anniversary of the day of my birth. WHY WAS I BORN?



Dad felt great initially after his hospital stay at Christmas week. I've been calling him just about every day, and things were looking good. We were able to celebrate his 90th birthday. That optimism shifted a couple of weeks ago. When I talked to him on the phone, he was coughing a lot. He had an appointment with his primary care doctor lined up for the middle of March, and meanwhile, he was getting lined up for more tests. Two of those were scheduled for tomorrow (March 6)  and Thursday (March 7 - which happens to be my freaking birthday.)

The beginning of last week, he was sounding really bad - kind of like the way you would assume a 90 year old man with congestive heart failure would sound. A persistent, deep rattling cough. The last phone call I had with him was unbearable. He told me, as soon as we hang up, I'm going to message my Doc through the "portal" and let him know he was feeling fed up. Looking back, Phyllis (his girlfriend) and I are both kicking ourselves for not being more pro-active and getting him to at least see the resident nurse at his senior living complex, who would have got him into the hospital right away, no doubt. However, what's done is done. Later that night (last Thursday), I got a phone call from Phyllis at 8 p.m.

Dad had called 911, then called Phyllis to let her know he was going back in. She let me know that she was going up to the hospital (she lives a half an hour away, versus my hour and a half away), and would be with him while he was being admitted. It was an icy, cold night, and I had already had a couple of drinks and I was tired, so I told her I couldn't drive up that night, but that I would go up the next day. She agreed that that was the best plan.

The next morning, Friday, I got up early and got ready to go. Here's the other kicker on my end. It was JUST that day, Thursday February 28, that I said to myself, Kate - it's time to QUIT SMOKING. And I talked Don into it, too, because we have to do it together. We both did really good on Thursday. Friday morning, I did really well as I rushed around getting ready to leave for a night or two - but after talking with Phyllis about Dad's condition.. well. I cut myself some slack and had ONE before I got in the car. I had a bad feeling about Dad's condition.

I was on the road by about 10 a.m. and somewhere along the way, I got a call from the hospital. Are you coming up? Yes, I'll be there about 11:30. Okay perfect - we need to talk with you. Where is he? ICU room 404.

Fuck. I left messages with my brother Nat and my sister Clarissa who both live in Massachusetts. Both of them were working, but I told them they might want to figure out a way to get up to Brunswick, Me, as soon as possible, because, well - I don't know, but this could be it.

I called my band mate Jessica and told her the news and told her I wouldn't be able to play the Saturday night gig - and because I have the car, Don wouldn't be able to make it, either. I called my friend Davy, who I knew would be able to get in touch with Deborah, who is one of Dad's friends from his old church and who also happens to be a Hospice professional and helped us with my mother's Alzheimer's and dying, as well. I didn't smoke. I sang out loud, because I was going crazy. I chewed a lot of gum.

I was also thinking a lot about our friend Pepper, who had dropped dead on the previous Tuesday morning (February 25.)  I'll have to write more about him later - he was one the very first musicians we met when we moved to Maine - and there is so much more I need to say about him. I was sad about his death, and sad that I would probably not be able to make the celebration of life planned for him on Sunday in Brownfield.

I finally arrived at Mid Coast Hospital and found my way to the ICU. It's always a shock to see anyone hooked up to those lifesaving tubes and wires, half alive, nurses and doctors swooshing around, switching out saline and attending wounds and assessing pain levels - but when it's your vibrant, life loving 90 year old Dad? Well, what can I say. The tears came out in waves. I never totally lost it, but there was a lot of leakage coming out of the corners of my eyes.

He was lucid, but because of the pain killers, many signs of confusion were evident, as well. He knew who I was, and seemed happy and not surprised to see me at his bedside. His left eye was swollen and red and swirling with pus, as if some drunk had punched him in the face out back behind the bar. They said it was conjunctivitis - but that shit looked a lot worse then the time I got that bacterial infection many years ago.

The hospitalist named Lauren greeted me and asked if I wanted to talk with her alone, or in the presence of Dad. I told her I wanted to be with Dad, and he said, yes, I want to hear it. It's his life - I want him to know what's going on and make his own decisions for as long as he can.

After she gave me the run down, I said, hold on - I walked over to a bag I brought in with me, and pulled out a note book and a pen. In that bag, I had also placed the "Dad Package" I've been keeping in my file cabinet for a few years now. That's the Power Of Attorney papers and his Last Will & Testament. Though Dad is in no hurry to move on to "the other side," I'm very grateful that he has been pro-active and worked all of those uncomfortable yet necessary things out for my siblings and me.

I asked her to run down the details again so I could write them down - because there was a LOT going on. And, you know how doctors talk - it's like a foreign language at times. There was the eye infection. There was his gall bladder, filled with gunk and "angry" (as one doctor described it later.) There was the massive amount of fluid hovering in and around his lungs, which needed to be drained in order for him to breath better - but that procedure couldn't be done until his blood thickened back up (old folks - always on the blood thinner, you know.) And, lastly, the heart. They saw a mass there, they couldn't say for sure what it was, and there was leaking going on in the valves and arteries and all that. And, because of his condition and age, they were in no hurry to cut him open and fix the problem. They weren't confident his ticker could take it. Oh, and by the way, they asked. Do you want to be resuscitated if your heart decides to cave? Dad implores - yes, I want you to try! But, I don't want to live like a vegetable. All of that was already signed & sealed in the Dad Package, but getting it verbally was good to hear, too.

So, as the amazing team attended to him, I took some time to go to a room just outside of the ICU - a "family room." The "I don't know, what are we going to do room" is more like it - and I plugged my phone into the wall and called my brother again. He still wasn't available to talk, so I left him another message and read him down the list of woe I had made, and once again, suggested he try and make the time to come up, as difficult as that was. Then I called Clarissa, and she was teaching a class. As she answered the phone, I heard her say the last part of a sentence in her lecture, and then say to her students, I'm sorry, I have to take this call. She had already apologized to them in advance and warned them that she would have to interrupt the class if her sister called. She stepped out of the classroom and I gave her the low down. She told me that she would be leaving work soon and then she'd drive home, pack a bag and head on up to Maine.

I went back to Dad's bedside, and Phyllis showed up. Dad really lit up when he saw her. I left them alone after a little while and went out to my car and called Don to update him. He was having a hard time, too. He had spoken with our other band mate Bailey earlier, and the "no Kate, no Don for BCR show at The Tailgate tomorrow night plan" was solidified. I got a call from Dad's hospice friend, Deborah, and filled her in. I also received a call from Joan, the wife of Richard, who was the former minister at Dad's church and someone Dad had a very good friendship with, although he hasn't been able to see Richard much lately as he is having his own health issues. I also received a call from the senior living complex staff nurse, Deb, who told me she'd make a quick visit to him later and submit her records to the team at Mid Coast.

Clarissa arrived at the hospital around 7 p.m. and Phyllis had gone home by then. Clarissa greeted Dad, who was pretty groggy and in and out of sleep and consciousness. Clarissa has quietly been attending courses and in training on how to be a medium for the last four years, and she also has been trained in Reiki healing. While Dad was dozing, she went to the foot of the bed and held his ankles and closed her eyes. I sat quietly by his side and peeked up at her a couple of times, but didn't disturb her as she did her thing. When she was done with her reading (or whatever it was that she did there), we stepped out of the room to talk. We went back to the "I don't know, what are we going to do room" and we exhaled and regrouped. She told me that while she was doing her reading (or whatever it was that she did there) she saw a figure that rose up behind Dad's head. He was a tall, dark haired man. She asked the spirit if Dad was going to die today. The spirit man told her no, not today. That's Dad's DAD, right, I said? I don't know, she said, but probably. It was comforting to be armed with that information, as odd and unbelievable as it is. I told her that Dad's Dad had been popping into my head a lot in the last 24 hours. Perhaps because he died from heart failure, though at a much younger age then Dad is now.

Clarissa and I left around 8 p.m. In the time that I was there, I had been present for many different doctor visits (heart doc, gastro doc, lung doc, general surgeon doc.) I tried to write down as much as I could, but by the time we left, my head was spinning, and I was fuzzy and spaced out from the whole thing. Not to mention, withdrawal from smoking. I got the key to Dad's apartment out of his belongings in the closet of the ICU room, and after a stop at a store to pick up a few little bottles of wine, some seltzer water, a cold coffee for the morning and some nuts and chocolate, I met Clarissa at the senior living facility, where Dad owns an apartment. I had called the place earlier that day and filled them in on what was happening, and the woman at the desk told me that it was fine for us to sleep at his place. She was sympathetic and wished Mardy well.

Clarissa had picked up some nice sandwich wraps on her way up, and we were comforted by being around the family things and photos he has in his place. We talked a lot, ate, drank a little, then turned in early. I did smoke two cigarettes on the way back to the apartment, but I never stepped out after dinner. We finally got to talk on speaker phone with Nat, who assured us that he planned on arriving at the hospital by Saturday afternoon. On top of everything else, we were also keeping an eye out on the snow storms, in Massachusetts and Maine. Of course, because, nothing is easy.

The next morning, we got to the hospital about 9 a.m. Dad was alert, but suffering from a lot of confusion. The day before, he had complained of feeling a lot of nausea - most likely from the medications, and the team had finally found the right cocktail to abate that by Saturday, but, boy - he was a little loopy! He became increasingly exasperated as he complained to me that they had "moved his computer and his printer into the other room" and "why can't they just put it back" and "why is that painting there instead, that's where my computer is supposed to be?" A couple of testy, weird moments there where I had to go out of the room to pretend to check with the nurses to find out what "the exact numbers of the other room where, and why can't they just put his computer screen back where it was?" Eventually, he calmed down as I veered him off of the topic. I had good training from my experience with Mom's hallucinations and obsessions due to the Alzheimer's Disease she suffered from.

Phyllis came by for a short visit around noon, then went off to a live-stream opera down the road. Normally, Dad would have joined her for that (sad face.) Nat called a little before 3 p.m. to alert us that he would be arriving soon, so Clarissa and I walked down to the lobby to meet him at the main entrance. I wanted to prepare him a little more before he walked in to the shock of seeing Dad in the ICU in that condition. Even with the advance notice,  Nat still couldn't hold back a few tears, either. It's just not an easy thing to see.

The nurses were saying that Dad's blood was probably just about thick enough now to do the drain procedure. But, it was still up in the air about when that would happen, so Clarissa, Nat and I went down to the cafeteria and had some food and talked. It was all pretty surreal, to be honest. Nat, especially, looked pretty ashen and in shock.

After our meal, Clarissa drove down to a Starbucks to get a coffee for her and a tea for me. When Nat and I got back to Dad's room, the nurse and Dad were all excited to tell us that the procedure had been done while we were gone, and that they had drained about 2 liters of fluid from around his left lung. Dad was exhilarated and seemingly, quite proud of himself!  The nurse also said that the docs decided he was stable enough to be moved out of ICU over to a regular hospital room, and that that would happen probably around 9 p.m. when a room opened up. We were all feeling pretty burnt out, but we resolved to stay until he was moved to his new room in the south wing of the hospital. Phyllis had stopped in once more, on her way back from the opera, and once again, Dad really lit up like a school boy. They are pretty darn cute together.

As it were, the room became available earlier then anticipated, and the process to move him to the new room began around 6 p.m. We watched as the teams did the switch over to his new bed, and we said goodbye and thanked the wonderful ICU team. (One of the nurses from ICU introduced her self to Dad as "Bree, like the cheese." She was darling.) The new team of nurses checked his vitals and got him settled in, and once the lights were dimmed, we said goodnight to Dad and made our way out to our parked cars.

I drove back to the store and bought FOUR baby bottles of chardonnay, and Clarissa and Nat picked up some subs from Subway for us. We all met back at Dad's apartment and settled in. We ate, talked and watched a little bit of an Adam Sandler movie and "Maine Cabin Masters," but it wasn't too long before we turned in to sleep. Clarissa and I threw a sheet over Dad's queen sized bed and slept there, and Nat pulled the cushions off of the love seat couch and slept in front of the television in the living room.

Sunday morning we were up early. I realized that I wasn't feeling too good. I was congested and my stomach was gurgling like a melting mountain brook on a warm, early spring day. Clarissa offered me some Elderberry Syrup that she had with her, and I gratefully slurped down a healthy dose or two.  Nat left before us and got to the hospital by 8:30 a.m., and Clarissa and I drove over to the Wild Oats bakery in Brunswick center. She bought herself a breakfast roll up and a scone, and I just drank a cold hibiscus tea and nibbled a few bites of her scone. I felt off balance and weak, and I cried a little while we sat at the cafe table. As usual, Clarissa was very comforting, sliding a packet of tissues over my way. We left the bakery and went back to our cars and drove the ten minutes up to the hospital, arriving about 9 a.m.

When we entered the room, it was nice to see Dad sitting in the cushy hospital recliner instead of lying in the bed, and his eye looked much better, but he was still tired from the uncomfortable sleeping conditions in a hospital. Dad's morning nurse was terrific - Mal. She let us know that she was checking with the doctor to see if it was okay to take the catheter out, which would be a tremendous relief for Dad. Nat left by 10 a.m., as he had a flight to catch at 5 p.m out of Logan for a week long ski trip in Utah he had already lined up weeks ago. Clarissa left around 10:30 a.m., as she had a ton of work to do to prepare for her week of teaching at Bentley. I lingered a little longer - I was feeling much better -  and because I wanted to see if I could catch some more doctors coming in.

I stepped out the room to call Phyllis and update her, and when I walked back into his room, the hospitalist of the weekend was there with Dad. Dad wanted to be discharged as soon as possible, but he was told he wasn't quite there yet. They were able to take out "the poker in his pecker" (as Dad called it, funny guy), so that was a relief, and he was also taken off the IV saline, as he was back to eating and drinking again. But, he had to keep the IV antibiotics in because of the infections in his gallbladder and eye. The doc ordered up a hospital physical therapist and occupational therapist to make an assessment, and Dad ate lunch around 11:30 a.m.

After he finished eating, he insisted on trying to stand up on his own. I watched and hovered like a young mother with a toddler as he slowly rose from the chair, stood up, wobbled, and sat back down. He repeated that once more, and then he said, good, I can do it, so maybe they'll let me go home now. But right now, I've got to take a dump!

Luckily, the male physical therapist was just outside the door checking out Dad's charts before assessment, and it was he who assisted Dad to the commode. Naturally, I stepped out of the room for what seemed like forever! While Dad was having a grand old time in the bathroom, answering questions about his work life to the friendly Physical Therapist, I called Phyllis to update her. I told her I was feeling a lot better, but that I should really go home to recharge. Also, there was quite a bit of snow in the forecast for later that evening into the next day, and I didn't want to be stuck in any of that. We settled on the plan, and she said she would visit later that afternoon around 4 p.m. So, leaving Dad in the good hands of the excellent team at Mid Coast Hospital, I finally said goodbye to Dad and hit the road around 12:30 p.m.

I got home around 2 in the afternoon, and I rambled away to Don, filling him in on as much as I could remember. About 20 minutes later, I looked out the window, and who should I see driving up our road but our band mates Steve and Jessica, just back from Pepper's celebration of life in Brownfield. It was really good to see them, and they filled us in on their adventures at the Tailgate gig that we had to miss the night before. We had a few laughs, and I updated them on where we were with all of the uncertainty of the future with Dad. After about half an hour, they got back on the road to a gig they had scheduled that evening in Hallowell.  Don drove down to the market and picked up some dinner and later made us a delicious dinner of broiled salmon, mashed potatoes and green beans. I was toast and retired fairly early, my kitties all too happy to have me back where I belong. In bed.

As predicted, it snowed Sunday night into Monday, and I spent the afternoon clearing the driveway of about 6 inches as Don worked upstairs in his office. Phyllis visited Dad that afternoon and filled us in on his condition later that night via email. His eye was even better, but still not totally better, and she was concerned because she noticed that he was coughing a little bit, again. This worried me. We talked again this morning, and we decided that I would stay home one more day, then head up tomorrow, Wednesday March 6,  to visit Dad and take over the point person position, giving Phyllis a day off. I also wanted to empty out his mailbox back at his apartment.

I went out today to the transfer station and market, but realized quickly that, fuck an A - I'm pretty sure the Jeep needs a rear brake job. We've had this gig lined up 3 and a half hours away in Sturbridge, Ma this Saturday, and we are all pretty anxious about the long drive. And sure as shit, my one reliable car has to have work done. I got back from market and told Don (oh, the stress building) and he questioned my diagnosis so I told him to take it out for a test drive himself. Could we still go on such a long drive and back? Could I still go to Brunswick tomorrow? Nope. I called my mechanic, and thankfully, he was able to fit the Jeep in on Thursday to do the job. Hopefully, we will be able to get the old back up truck out of the driveway so we can get ourselves back from the mechanic. It's about 12 minutes away by car.

OH, AND IT'S MY BIRTHDAY THAT DAY, BY THE WAY. Oh well. Make up for it later. Or not. WHATEVER!

So, I texted Phyllis, and told her I won't be able to make it to Brunswick tomorrow after all and that I was about to have a nervous breakdown over all of this.... get it. BRAKE DOWN? HA HA HA.

She called me right away, and she was with Dad at the hospital. I was able to talk with him a little bit, and he said he felt a lot better. His eye was almost all the way healed, and Phyllis told me he wasn't coughing quite as bad as yesterday. And, they said he may be able to be released tomorrow after all! But, not to his home. There is a rehab facility next door to his senior living complex that has a bed reserved for him, so that makes him happy to know he will be that much closer to his apartment. Hopefully, he will stay healthy enough to make that next step soon.

Bottom line, though. He has congestive heart failure. He was diagnosed in 2011, just a few months after Mom died in May of that year. General prognosis for people diagnosed with CHF is 10 years of life. He's had it for 8 years.

I hope to hell he can go back for a year or two or longer living independently as he has been. That's the only way he wants to live. He sure as hell doesn't want to be living in a nursing home, shuffling around with a walker, playing bingo with a bunch of folks who have dementia. Oh hell no.

I know I've missed a lot of details and made a lot of errors in this ridiculously long recount, as well as used the word "hell" three times in that last paragraph.... but for now, this will do.

*Edited this post a little more on Wednesday, March 6.  New update post coming a little later, probably, if I can keep up with it all.