My father is dying. It might be next week or next month or next year, but somehow, he has made the transition since January from a relatively sturdy old man to a delicate elderly one; his once-beautiful fingers drawing up into claws, a hump forming underneath his wool vest on his bent-over back, his clothes clownishly big on him. It doesn’t help that he’s lost two teeth from his dentures recently, or that the age spots on his face and arms seem to be multiplying or expanding. My father, who used to be movie-star handsome, is disintegrating before my eyes. And I'm helpless to stop it.
Sunday morning. I picked him up at 7 a.m. to take him
to Holy Cross hospital. Yesterday, when he was having trouble breathing, my
older sister Susan and brother-in-law Jeff, visiting from Phoenix, took him -
on his doctor’s orders - to a local imaging center to get a chest X-ray. It
showed fluid around his lungs, and he was told to go immediately to the
emergency room, but he refused.
After much cajoling from my sister and I, he agreed to go Sunday if I
would take him early to reduce the wait. I drive up and he is waiting outside
his front door with his walker, so that he doesn’t wake my sister and her
husband. He’s wearing a sweater that’s not warm enough for the early chill, and
his
favorite cap – it’s the one with the Marine insignia. It never fails when he
wears it that someone will stop by to thank him for his service. Last month
when I took him for lunch at Panera's, a woman came over, took his hand and
said thanks, and then asked, "When did you serve?" My father said,
"In the last war." When she left, I said, "Dad! You didn’t serve
in the last war!" “Well,” he said, it was the last one for me."
He looks small and vulnerable, and I
help him into my front seat, lifting the left leg and then the right, wincing
at the moans those little movements bring. He’s been letting me buckle him in
for months now, pulling his arms over his chest and holding tight fists
together as the metal clip finds its mate. He’s more and more childlike these
days, and I often joke to my friends that I’m the “reverse soccer mom,” running
my father to dialysis on Monday/Wednesday/Friday; going home to knock out an
article or some housework; then picking him up, making a McDonald’s
drive-through run (senior coffee with four creams, six Chicken McNuggets with two
barbecue sauce packets, and a McDouble with cheese), and taking him home to eat at his
dining room table. He’s gotten fixated on McDonald’s in recent years, though he
never liked it before. I know it’s not healthy, but what the hell? He’s 92, and he wants it… and
I must admit they make a good cup of coffee.
I’m always extra cheerful when I’m
with my father, maybe to balance out his sadness. This morning, I chirp “G’day,
mate!” before I shut the car door, fold and install his walker in my trunk, and
get in to start the car. I remember to turn the radio off because with my
father’s hearing loss, it’s mostly a bunch of static to him. “You feeling okay,
Dad?” I say. He doesn’t speak, just nods. I know he hates this merry-go-round
of doctors and hospitals. My father was always so strong, and this life doesn’t
suit him – it embarrasses him. “It’s good we’re going so early,” I say. “We’ll
be taken quickly.” Another miserable nod.
I don’t promise he’ll be going home
today, because I’m pretty sure they’ll keep him. We ride the 15 minutes to the
hospital in silence, and I swing into the lane for the emergency room, grateful
there are only two cars in the small parking lot, hoping it means he can get in
quickly. Sure enough, as we enter I can see only one other person waiting. In
seconds, we are called by a petite Indian nurse with “Gathika” on her name tag, who checks him in
and takes my father’s blood pressure, then tells us to walk through the
automatic doors to the senior section of Emergency, where he is assigned the
first room. My father seems to be the only patient. One of the nurses, a brisk young blonde girl in pink scrubs, hands me
a gown, says “I’m Stephany, he can leave his pants and shoes on,” and starts
taking my father’s vitals. When she steps out, I help my father take off his
undershirt and shirt, thankful they are both clean. I notice the shirt is
frayed near the top button and make a mental note to rotate it out of his
wardrobe. He is tired from rising so early and keeps yawning. After Stephany
comes in a few more times to insert a port and hook him up to a monitor, and a
doctor stops by to tell us Dad is going to be admitted in a few hours, he falls
asleep, his mouth open enough for me to see the two missing teeth, his gown
falling from one bony shoulder, his scratched brown shoes sticking up from
under his blanket.
I went through a
similar health scenario with my mother nine years ago – increasing visits to
doctors and hospitals, and then the decline, and then she died. Only my father was younger and stronger then, and bore a lot of the driving and the
worry. I had one of my best moments with my mother as she lay on a gurney in a
hospital hallway. She was already losing her mental edge, and I asked her,
“What have you liked best about your life, Mom?” and she smiled like an angel, her
tiny face framed in a fringe of black and grey hair, her eyes squinched up the
way I loved, and said, “Oh, it was always you kids.”
My father is
stirring, scratching at his wrist where Stephany has added a pink “LIMB ALERT”
and a red “ALLERGY” bracelet to his admittance wristlet. My father has had two
knee replacements and one revision, is allergic to latex, had his bladder
removed after fighting cancer 20 years ago, requiring his use of an ostomy bag,
and has been on dialysis for 10 years after his kidneys failed. I know the four
medications he takes, and the dosage, and I can reel this information off as if
it’s mine. He is a warrior, and I have watched him take each hit on his health
with stoicism, except the day he found out, after making it through cancer,
that his kidneys weren’t functioning. “Why did I have to get two things?” he
asked me, despondently, and I can’t remember if he voiced his perceived wrong
any further, but that’s how it sounded, and in my head I said it: “I know, Dad
- it’s not fair.”
It’s already
10:30, and soon my sister Susan will be here to relieve me. She’s an attorney
who practices in the health field, and often asks pointed
questions of doctors that start with, “I’m not a doctor, but” and
include information she has read or heard about. I
love when this happens, and I hope when she comes the doctor returns then, too,
so I can sympathy-smile at him while she's talking, because I already know I'm not a doctor. I don't even need to say it.
I
go down the hall to use the bathroom, noticing that since we arrived there are
six more patients, one a woman in the space right next to the bathroom, and I
can hear her whimpering through the walls. It’s all such a cry for help, and I
feel for her, too, my compassion boundless in a place like this, where you
would not come if all was well. I know my father will be mad when he wakes up -
that he can’t go home, that he will have to sleep in a strange bed and will worry
about his ostomy bag being handled by other people. He will want his navy-blue
leather chair in front of his TV and his orderly kitchen and his black plaid
flannel pajama pants. He will want to be the master of his domain, instead of a
patient at the mercy of unpredictable visits by nurses to check his temperature
or invade his privacy. I leave the bathroom and wonder, as I have
many times before, if this is the last trip to the hospital; if I will have to
bring those beat-up brown shoes he won’t part with home in a plastic bag,
crying as it lays on the seat next to me. I know that one day will be the last day, and tears rim my eyes at the thought; then one spills over and rolls down my right cheek. I brush it away, and as I reach to pull back the curtain to my father’s room, I hear a woman saying, “I’m not a doctor, but…”
©2018 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie
