6/5/08 in Open diary entries

My dad is in the hospital again. Third time in as many weeks.
He’s been in a nursing home in St. Pete FL for a while now. Since he broke his neck. He has Alzheimer’s. Lung cancer (as far as we know). He hasn’t been doing good, not eating, very violent. Won’t get up out of bed.
A few weeks ago he had passed out. Off to the ER he went. Low O2, low BP. got him fixed up, sent him back to the home. The next week, back off to the hospital for dehydration and UTI. The home said he hasn’t been eating at all, not even drinking his ensure, or much water for that matter.
While he was at the hospital, my sisters went to visit him. Gave him a wee bite of banana. He swallowed and swallowed but it didn’t seem to want to go down. Puked it back up with blood. Nice. There was a lot of blood in his Foley too, but that is to be expected with a raging UTI, plus he likes to try to pull the damn thing out. Can we all say OUCH?
So after hearing that from my sister, I said that the suspected cancer has prolly spread. He prolly can’t swallow.
So after a few days of IV antibiotics, they send him back to the home.
On my way home from work yesterday, my sister calls. Dad has been 911’ed back to the hospital, seems that a nurse walked by, talked to him, hit the john, came out and found my dad pale, clammy and unresponsive.
ER nurse reported to my sister that he is septic, prolly because they sent him home too soon from the pneumonia… pneumonia??? they didn’t say anything to anyone about pneumonia when they talked to the doc the last time he was there. But yep, there it was in his chart.
Makes me wonder if anyone has a fucking clue sometimes.
Even myself.
Anyhoo, after hearing about the blood in the vomit thing, I obviously got depressed, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to see my dad before he died.
P being P got online and looked to see when I could get down there.
I’m going to go down later this month, to either say goodbye to him, or to scatter his ashes if he doesn’t pull out of this latest bout.
Yes, I would love to see him, even if he doesn’t have a clue who I am, but I almost wish that he could let go before I got there… he isn’t living. There is no quality of life for him anymore.
So. Yeah.
I’m going to go get some coffee.
Feh.