Diapers and Gowns, the Hospital Kind
Chapter 44 - Waiting For God Knows
June 27, 2014 - St. Marc-sur-Mer, France
That's what he's in now, I just heard. Daddy. Can you bear it. A Viking in diapers. Doesn't follow, somehow. Apparently it's easier to change them—they have tabs either side—than Depends, which you have to yank on and off. I can't get the image out of my mind.
Bonnie found Daddy this morning sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to get up, but made him wait a few hours until Erika the Hospice Home Health Aide arrived, and then with Dominick's help they got him into a wheelchair and into the den. He seemed perky-ish. Asked for a Pecan Sandie, which he managed half of. Acts like it hurts to swallow, Bonnie reports. Not counting the cookie, Daddy's only had a few sips of orange juice yesterday with something gag-making called Thick-It in it, which I guess thickens it, which is supposed to make it easier to swallow.
Bonnie has mass-mailed The Staff and copied me in to Daddy’s new meds routine, which doesn't strike me as too different from the old meds routine with the addition of cough medicine and of course the morphine but it pleases me she's so on the ball. She reports at the end of every day. Yesterday she included the full contents of the little booklet Hospice gave out when they came on board, part of their "packet", detailing The Final Countdown (my caps, not theirs) —what to expect in the final three months, then weeks, then days, then hours, then minutes. I'd already read it, as it happens, and noted that some of the stuff one expects to see at "hours" to live Daddy has been exhibiting since he first came home from the nursing home last October, such as “being vague” and “sleeping a lot”. So it's all relative. And hard to judge. I would say almost impossible to judge. But I know it helps Bonnie to have it all out in black and white to refer to.
Emotions running high, for sure, on both sides of the Atlantic.
FRENCH AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER NEWS:
They’ve ended their strike early. DK and I will now be able to fly back to the U.K. tomorrow as planned. Even though we haven't finished editing.
THE PLAN:
Get back to Suffolk, see what’s what Stateside and come back to France and finish the project—when we can. We went out for dinner tonight since our hosts had a party to go to. Town called La Baule. The first time we'd actually felt like we were in France, having been cooped in the studio since Tuesday, seeing the sun only at breakfast and maybe at lunch break on the terrace.
RENTAL CAR NEWS:
About ten minutes after we got back from dinner we heard a car go past the guest house on the little stone drive and figured the hosts were home from their party. Nope. Denis, just setting out the trash, discovered our Opel rental halfway down the drive and halfway up a steep bank, sideways, one wheel in the air. Apparently the emergency brake was NOT “on” when I’d parked it earlier, as I’d thought it was—I’d fiddled with the switch forever, it was confusing even with the manual in front of me. The car I guess thought about it for awhile then decided to quietly roll forward and take a sharp left and head south down the steep drive, just missing a stone wall and the host's Mini by inches. Then Denis, on the slope above it, nearly slipped underneath it trying to pull up the driver’s door so I could maybe drop down into it and start it up and see if I could turn the wheels and, please God, get the bloody thing level again, which I managed, then got it facing the right direction (again missing the host’s Mini by inches) and back up the drive and into its correct parking spot this time with the brake REALLY “on”. I hope. I will now get no sleep worried about THE CAR.
Am now weepy. Everything, I guess. Fucking Opel tipped the balance.
June 28, 2014 - Suffolk, England
Bonnie says Odd is now too uncomfortable trying to wear clothes in bed so she picked up some hospital gowns for him. She says that he is a fighter, keeps trying to stand, wants to walk. She says she doubts though that that will happen. He somehow got past the bed rails last night and landed on the floor. 911 called. Policeman came and helped him up. Terri called me to apologise, saying she couldn't get over there in time. She is now sleeping in "Peg's" bed, ie in the living room, from where she can actually see Daddy. Peg is in the den on the couch. Odd had another breathing attack or two yesterday and refused nebulizer treatment but asked Terri to stay with him and hold his hand. This is after she "changed" him and his sheets.
What is Peg doing during all this? Why isn’t she holding his hand? I should be there doing it. Terri is a better daughter to my own father than I am. Why is he getting so much morphine? Why am I delaying going over?