hizgeorgiapeach
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Despite the fact that the hospice company decided dad "didn't need them" any longer, things have been getting rapidly and progressively worse over the past month. His breathing has become much more seriously labored. His eatting habits have become more erratic. Sleep has pretty much been non-existant for any of us in the household in anything longer lasting than a 2 hour stretch. DHS is still dragging their feet concerning helping me find a nursing home for him - he doesn't have enough income for private pay, he makes to much pension to qualify for medicaid assistance to pay for it. And yesterday, he was admitted to the hospital.
For the past week, things have been getting steadily worse in pretty much everything. On top of the breathing problems he's had for so long, a couple of days ago he started having problems urinating. We've been pumping fluids into him as quick as we can... but nothing is coming back Out again. Yesterday, while I was on the phone attempting to get cooperation from either his original PCP, or from the one the insurance company randomly assigned him to (who I found out yesterday RETIRED back in July!).... dad went into a bit of a crisis. His breath was wheezing, he was choking on his own fluids, couldn't sit himself up, or keep himself set up when someone propped him up. I ended up calling an ambulance to come get him, and take him to the ER - because nothing I was doing or Could do with the equipment here at home was making any difference in his comfort level, much less in the problem itself.
A significantly stronger breathing treatment than he had available here at home - and the ER putting him on an oxygen level that is 3 Times what he normally takes for several hours - got his breathing under control again. Unfortunately, the doctors think he might be going into renal failure, and on top of that he has a seriously elevated white count and some of the other bloodwork came back abnormal. (Abnormal for him - drug levels off, liver function stuff outta whack, that sort of thing.)
We don't know yet whether he's going to make it out of the hospital this time. I've got to go back up there shortly, to check in on things and find out what the doctors are thinking at this point. They sent me home last night, telling me that there was nothing I could do up there... and between the doctors, the roomie, and the other half, I wasn't really given the option of protesting that decision. I became nearly hysterical yesterday after they loaded dad into the ambulance to head to the ER, and I find even now that I'm having decidedly mixed feelings about what's happening. I thought I had myself..... prepared for the inevitable. Part of me has even been pretty much praying that it would finally Happen, so it would all simply be Over once and for all. Now that that might be really happening - right now - there's a really good chance he won't come out of the hospital at all - I'm finding that it is probably one of the hardest things I've ever faced.
It hurts, because for the past couple of months, dad and I haven't been getting along. I've been suffering from burnout as a caregiver, and it has made my patience with him extremely short. While I've continued to carry out what I felt was my duty to him - I've resented that duty, resented him, resented the circumstances. I've been angry more often than anything else, and when I'm not angry I've been depressed. I was terrified yesterday that he was going to die there in the ER, yet when the doctors informed me that they were admitting him... the first thing that went across my mind was. "Damn that old bastard - I'm so gonna strangle him when he gets home, for scaring me like this." I'm having trouble reconciling myself to the fact that I've...... been praying for him to die and get it done. I'm having trouble reconciling the two halves of myself that alternately want him to go ahead and pass peacefully in his sleep up at the hospital, and want him to get past this and stick around.
I found out Tuesday that dad's mother - who has been in a nursing home in another state for the past 10 years, living on borrowed time and so deep in Alzheimer's that she didn't even know dad any longer - passed away during the weekend, while I was out camping in an area that got no cell phone service. I spent wenesday and yesterday morning trying to figure out how to tell him that his mother - whose health has been fragile for years - finally passed peacefully in her sleep. He still doesn't know, because I was still trying to figure out a gentle and compassionate means of telling him - when I've been so angry and often overly harsh lately - when he went into his medical crisis. Now he's in the hospital and may not come out - and I can't make myself tell him while he's laying in a hospital bed. He deserves to know that his mother is gone, and that she died in peace while she slept. He deserves to know what's going on. But I face the dilemna of how to tell him, and whether to wait until I'm certain whether he's going to make it himself.
I don't know, at this point, whether I hope more that this is the end, and he'll finally have the peace he's wanted since the stroke..... or that this is just a minor hickup, he'll be better in a few days, and get out of the hospital. Either way, this isn't as easy to face now that it's In my face, as I thought it would be.
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