Dad's puny.

As I told you yesterday, mom called me at about 1am Wednesday morning telling me she was calling 911. Dad was complaining of chest pains. "Could I come?" was the question, as if there would be any other answer but YES!

As I said yesterday, I drove over there thinking that might be THE night, but it wasn't. Dad spent the night in the emergency room, with mom and sis sitting with him till morning. After a few hours I had to bring Denise home so she could get some sleep before going to work. I was secretly thankful for that. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in the hospital all night. Of course, if they'd needed me I would have sat there with mom, but sis got there and they both told me to take Denise home at about 3:30. Denise called in to work in the morning and told them she'd been up all night at the hospital and that she'd be in late and then we slept in till about 11. As she headed to work, I headed back to the hospital.



When I got back over there at about noon, dad was up in his fifth floor room sleeping like a baby. I stayed all day, off and on. Sis spent about five hours with him in the afternoon while I went to see mom and do a few other things. Then mom came over at about dinner time while I took sis home. Mom got out of there at about 9:30pm, with me escorting her to her car out in the dark parking area before going home myself. Dad's one remaining brother and his wife visited him late in the evening and several relatives called during the day to see how he was doing.

It turns out dad has a urinary tract infection. That, coupled with dehydration, weakened him and had him laying in bed for several days until he complained about that pain. We're still not sure what those chest pains were all about, but his cardiologist will see him today.

Turns out he went for about 4 days last week without taking a bath or changing his own diaper. Mom would say "Don't you need a bath?" and he'd say "No.", and then just go back to bed. I guess it's gotten to be such a chore, taking his clothes off and bathing, that he decided not to do it. The result of all of that was this infection. He's also become more difficult to feed and care for, at times refusing to eat and constantly wanting something different than what mom fixes for him. She gives him water to drink all the time, worried that anything else will hurt his one remaining functional kidney, but I guess he wasn't drinking enough of it and has become dehydrated.

It looks like everything will be OK on the short term. But there are lingering questions in our minds about mom needing help taking care of him on a daily basis. Mom just doesn't have it in her to be a drill sargent, and that's increasingly what dad needs to force him to do what he needs to do to stay healthy. He's becoming more and more like a child and taking care of him is exhausting her. That REALLY worries us. If something happened to her we wouldn't have any choice but to put dad in a home. That's an issue were gonna have to deal with now.

Anyway, thanks for the beautiful comments to yesterdays post. You all mean a hell of a lot to me. Cheers.