Dad

In the tiny town my parents live in, hospice care was recently taken over by the hospital.

So if you're in hospice care and a holiday is coming, they move you to the hospital over the holiday because they don't want to pay their hospice workers to come to your home during that time.

I could write a thousand words about the new hospital administrator, I've been hearing about all the fuckery he's gotten up to since arriving about a year ago. It's hard to get doctors in that town and quite a few of them have left because of working conditions under this guy.

So they let Mom know that Dad would still be getting care, but transported him to the hospital on Wednesday. He was in a more or less comatose state, they'd been giving him two different medications to help with the agitated dementia and pain medication for the physical pain he was in. He was not able to communicate or interact by then. He just... slept.

I believe keeping him comfortable or end of life care are the terms.

They offered to move a hospital bed into his room at the hospital for Mom. My brother and his wife invited her to their house for Thanksgiving, too. She called me at work on Tuesday afternoon to ask me to help her make a decision.

I told her to go to Steve's if she wanted, because there was not anything she could do to help Dad but that if she chose to stay in town, that she should stay at home rather than the hospital, as it would probably take her about 10 minutes to go to the hospital if needed.

"Why suffer through sleeping on a hospital bed the way you did when Dad was in Boise?"

She stayed with him  nearly a week there, did not have a change of clothing or toiletries.

Understandable to forget those things or not consider them in the frantic rush to get him out the door and into the air ambulance. But it took a toll on her physically to sleep on a hospital bed for a week.
She's not in great shape anyway.
So she was physically beat up when she finally got home after a week. She spent the next two weeks in her comfortable bed, was able to bathe and take care of herself, something she hasn't been able to do for a long time because she was taking care of all Dad's needs.

By the time he got out of the hospital, spent a little over a week in a rehab place and finally came home, she was feeling pretty good. Her voice sounded strong, she wasn't foggy and confused the way she had been, and she was better off in every way.

Then he came home and the really hard parts started. Because of the dementia, he was very agitated and combative at night, keeping her awake at all hours and yelling at her and berating her and screaming unintelligibly. While he still had motor function, he'd get pissed and throw things at her. Everything he could reach from the bed would fly at her if she crossed him. Fortunately his aim was terrible.

She was kept running back and forth getting him stuff or calling the ambulance to come get him off the floor. She was exhausted, physically depleted and in a great deal of pain. She's 84 years old and has a lot of her own health issues.

She called me one night in a panic because he was being so mean to her. Saying awful things and screaming himself into deep coughing fits and then being angry with her because 'she made him mad'.

As a family we agreed that if it were Mom in such dire straits and Dad was tasked with taking care of her, he wouldn't. He's have had her in a nursing home as soon as possible. He wouldn't have ignored her there or anything, he would have been there visiting her all the time, but there was no way in hell that he'd be taking care of changing diapers and all the other stuff she was doing for him.

I don't fault him for that, by the way. I would not want to provide full time care for an adult for a myriad of reasons, which is why care homes and traveling nurses and home health care are all things. Mom just felt that it was her duty to do what she was doing and would not have wanted it any other way. But it was too much for her and we were worried.

Steve and Jim stepped in, got some home health care going and dealt with getting POA and other things in order. They did call and keep me informed, and I assured and reassured them that A: I trusted them to do whatever was right and B: I wanted nothing.  If they needed to sell the house to pay for my parents' care, then sell the house. Sell everything. Whatever.

I was also hopeful that would keep us from future conflict over 'stuff'. I told Steve, who really took the lead in all of it, that I knew he would handle things and that if there was something I could do, I would.

So Mom decided to go to Steve's house. It's almost two hours away from where she lives, though.

Jim and his family left town, too. They rented a house on the Oregon coast and their son and his family were going to stay there with them.

So Dad was left in the hospital alone. And while everyone was still asleep at 7:30 on Thanksgiving morning, he died.

I find myself feeling sorry for that. I don't think he knew he was alone, he was on some pretty heavy medication and what was left of his intellect departed about 16 days ago.

It's a lonely end for someone all the same.

I have been sad about it mostly for Mom's sake. Spending 64 years with someone really is a full lifetime, and for all the mental health issues and co-dependency and bumps and potholes and volcanoes and meteor strikes, they did love each other.