Here's Dad after 18 hours in the hospital. Seem curious?I wish I'd kept up with my blog during the past three weeks, but "life with Dad" was all consuming.
One day not long ago, Dad had what I've referred to as an Alzheimer's meltdown. He spent an entire morning on the telephone calling our landlord (to tell him what a health hazard this duplex was) an attorney (who he thought would come to his house to rewrite his trust) who he fired later that same day, his financial planner (who finally learned how really ill Dad has become) and his Belleville doctor, with whom he made an appointment in order to fix all of his medical problems. He then called both Jane and me at work to let us know that "he is the captain of this ship and, by God, we are going to do things his way!"
The doctor's appointment he made was a gift. It gave us the opportunity to speak with the doctor ahead of time to let him know that things were going downhill rapidly and Dad needed a serious change in his living situation. He was hospitalized with a diagnosis of "decline in mental status" with the goal of nursing home placement. What followed was a nightmare.
The hospital called the morning after he was admitted to tell us he'd fallen during the night. Actually, he decided at 11PM to do some deep knee bends because he'd been in bed all day. He passed out and was found in a rather large puddle of blood. The picture illustrates the laceration on his forehead along with a fractured nose. About a week later, we learned he also fractured his foot...but that is an entirely different story. The fainting episode earned him a bed on the telemetry unit on a heart monitor.
Three days later, we got a call at 1AM to let us know he was in ICU on a continuous dopamine drip and an external pacemaker. Big words that meant his heart was sick. While on the monitor on the telemetry unit, he'd had an episode of atrial fibrillation followed by a 12 second pause. It pretty much looked like his heart stopped. The end result was a diagnosis of "sick sinus syndrome" and the fix was a permanent pacemaker and yet another new prescription med. It was his "sick sinus syndrome" that caused the fainting resulting in his fall.
Eight days after he was admitted for a three day hospitalization for nursing home placement, Dad went to a nursing home in Columbia, 20 min. from Waterloo. He hated it there. Even though we all knew it to be a nursing home with a very good reputation, we understood why he felt that way. There were alarms going off constantly, patients shouting and generally speaking, not a very healing environment. God answered our prayers when three days later, there was an opening at the Alheimer's unit here in Waterloo. He was transferred there, now only 5 minutes away from us.
He's still very unhappy, but they tell us every single person admitted there is and then they eventually settle in. I don't see anyone as functional as Dad is, so I'm hoping after all the physical, occupational, and speech therapy (due to the fact that he sometimes chokes when he eats) he'll be able to transfer to the assisted living side.
When Dad has bad days, they're very, very bad. When he has good days, they're pretty darned entertaining. Today was good. I spent an hour and a half outside with him in the beautiful sunshine learned more things about his youth than I ever could have known. What a blessing!
Here's hoping Dad can find some kind of joy in what's left of his years on this earth. We never know what God has in his plan for us. I'm praying this part of his plan for Dad will end soon.
