I'm back! (did you notice I was gone??)
I am dead tired, and I am sure I am forgetting some things, but I wanted to break my silence (aside from my book reviews) and tell you about my recent trip west to visit my Dad. .
We arrived there on July 18th, as scheduled... but the situation was not what we'd been expecting. Earlier in the week, my sister called me, in tears, to tell me one of Dad's former neighbours had taken him to the local hospital emergency room. He was having intermittent abdominal pain and (ummm...), shall we say, bathroom issues? He was not in very good shape, severely dehydrated with some concerning bloodwork results. I asked her if we should change our flight and come earlier.. She told me she was on her way out there to see him, and not to do anything until she'd seen him for herself and reported back.
When I talked to her again, she told me they were admitting him. They weren't sure what the source of the problem was (and they were ultimately not able to determine that), but he was being closely monitored, and the drugs and hydrating fluids they were giving him seemed to be helping. He told her (only half-joking, I think!) to bring a deck of cards and some money (we play for quarters, lol). That made me feel better! so we decided to stick to our original plan.
We stopped briefly at Dad's apartment to unload our stuff when we arrived on Saturday afternoon, and then headed over to the hospital. Dad was in bed with the covers drawn up, but that was because the air vent was right above his bed and he was cold. He looked and sounded a lot better than I expected, and he was anxious to get home again, but they told him they were still waiting on some test results from the city, and that he'd be there until at least Monday.
We visited him at the hospital a few times every day for the next two days -- and then on Monday, he was discharged. It was his 87th birthday. :) He didn't feel much like cake just then, but he was very happy to be home.
My sister had planned to take a week off work while we were there -- but since she'd already been off for a week unexpectedly while Dad was in the hospital (on top of other recent time off to help clear out the house, etc.), she decided to return to the office while we were there to look out for Dad, and come out on the weekends. Dad's apartment only has two bedrooms, but his old neighbours generously offered to let her & her partner stay in their basement while we were there, so that worked out very well.
Dad didn't sleep very well at the hospital, so I was relieved when he declared, the first morning he was back home, that he'd had the best night's sleep he'd had in months. While in the hospital, he developed a taste for vanilla Greek yogurt (lol), and so we bought him some at the local store, and he ate several helpings of that every day. One of the neighbours gave him some vanilla Boost to try, and he actually liked that too (my grandfather loathed the stuff -- maybe they've improved it since then??). He also tried and loved the bottled iced tea that my sister was drinking. He doesn't drink nearly as much water as he should, but he would drink iced tea (and it's fluids!), so dh & I were kept busy running to the store to stock up! He has his meals delivered several times a week (and ordered meals for us too), so we didn't have to do a lot of cooking -- although we did have some fresh vegetables from the weekly local farmers' market while we were there (yum!). So he seemed to be eating a little better -- I heard him telling someone he had more of an appetite than he'd had in a while -- and my sister said she thought he looked and sounded better (and much more like his old self) than he had in months. (I thought so too.)
Dad asked us, early on, if we'd stay an extra week. For some unfathomable reason, I was not able to change our tickets online (as I did when we extended our stay in January, after Mom died) -- I had to call the airline's 1-800 customer service line -- and sit on hold for more than two hours before I was able to speak to an agent! It cost us a ridiculous amount of money to change our tickets (on top of the ridiculous amount it already cost us to buy the tickets in the first place -- travel within Canada is not cheap!) -- but I paid up, because it was clear Dad really wanted us to stay longer, and I wanted to make sure he was OK before we left. Plus he needed our help with a lot of stuff related to Mom's estate and the recent sale of the house): we took him to the lawyer's office, the bank, and another bank in another town where we'd lived in the 1970s (we took Dad there when we were there in May, too!)
We shopped for groceries, picked up the meals that were delivered to the building's door downstairs and reheated them later for dinner, and cooked on the nights we weren't getting those. We got Dad's yogurt, Boost, iced tea and breakfast cereal for him whenever he asked for it. I dusted the main living areas (which needed it!), cleaned the bathroom and swiffered the floor. (The cleaning lady he & Mom had at the house is going to start coming in a few times a month, which will help.) We picked up prescriptions at the local drugstore. We bought TV bingo cards, and I played with him every Saturday afternoon.
Dad watches Game TV for hours on end (the game show network -- much to our consternation -- arrrghhhhhh... he's also fond of "Judge Judy"...!), but he also watched a lot of CFL football games and Major League baseball (especially the Toronto Blue Jays). I'm not a huge sports fan, but that was infinitely preferable, lol.
We watched the construction of a new gas station next door from the balcony. And we played cards just about every night we were there.
We also had visitors: Neighbours from the house dropped by several times to see how he was doing. Parents' Neighbours' Daughter brought over all three Princesses when we had cake for his birthday, and returned with the Littlest Princess (#3) several times a week while we were there. Her parents also came by to visit when they were in town for the day. And one of my cousins, in Manitoba visiting family, stopped by for an hour, before heading home to Alberta. I hadn't seen her in about 25 years, so it was great to catch up!
And we went (back) to the funeral home: Dad purchased a niche at the local cemetery, which fits two urns, and we made arrangements to have Mom's ashes interred while we were there. We did that last Saturday, just before we returned to Ontario. There were just the five of us (me, dh, my sister & her partner, and Dad), PND, three of Mom & Dad's former neighbours/friends, and the minister at Mom's church who presided at her funeral. We were only there about 15 minutes, and then we went back to the apartment for lunch. I'd ordered a tray of deli meats, pickles and cheese a couple of loaves of rye bread and some potato chips from the local grocery store, and my sister brought some Mom's favourite KitKat bars for dessert We all had a nice visit.
On the downside: Dad fell twice while we were there: once, heading from the waiting room at the medical clinic, into the doctor's office (!). He insisted on using his cane and not bringing his walker with us in the car -- reached out for the counter to steady himself -- missed, and fell. :( Everyone came running to help him (and would you believe the doctor threw out his back trying to help dad up??). He skinned his knee (which the doctor cleaned and bandaged), and I think his pride was bruised, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage, thank goodness.
The second time was two hours before we were scheduled to leave for the airport (!!), in the bathroom, just after he got up. I think he was still half asleep and lost his balance. With a little help from me and his walker, he was eventually able to pull himself up off the floor, and again, aside from his pride, he didn't seem to have sustained any injuries. THANK GOODNESS. (I called him when we got home that night and he insisted he was fine. Hopefully he wasn't downplaying things...) My sister is looking into getting him a Lifeline ASAP (and hopefully he will wear it...!).
The doctor had mentioned he would refer Dad to homecare services too -- someone to look in on Dad regularly and maybe help him with his bath/shower. That would be a load off my mind (although I also have memories of my mother arranging a similar service for my grandmother, 30 years ago, only to have Grandma refuse to let the person into their apartment...!).
A few personal notes: Staying an extra week meant we were not at home on Katie's day (Aug. 7th -- 28 years later!) to do all the traditional things we usually do. It's not the first time we've been away fro home on that day, but it's been a while. We did go out for a while that afternoon on our own to spend some private time remembering her together. One of our traditions is a visit to the Dairy Queen for Blizzards :) -- there is no DQ in my parents' town, but there is a great little drive-in restaurant that's been around 60+ years (as long as I have!), and so we went there for ice cream, just the two of us. :)
We also went to the local cemetery, to scout out the site ahead of the committal service. I said to dh as we drove there that I wished I knew where my old boss (the owner of the local weekly newspaper who gave me my first job after journalism school) was buried. Would you believe he (and his wife, whom I also knew) were both cremated, and their ashes are in the same wall where Mom & Dad's niche is, just a few rows above them? I patted the marker in delight, said, "Thanks for my career, H." -- and dearly wished my late friend R., who worked for him too, was still here, so I could tell her. :(
My sister & her partner brought me "the box" from their house in the city (the one I'd filled with all the stuff I wanted to keep, when we were there in May, clearing out Mom & Dad's house). We brought an extra empty suitcase with us, and I was able to bring home the rest of my diaries/journals and other youthful writing projects, autograph books from my school days, part of an old scrapbook with concert tickets and reviews in it, etc. My sister had thrown in our great-uncle's letters home from Italy during WWII, which I had insisted should go to the county museum where my mother's family is from. I decided to take those home too, to look through and scan. I'll figure out how to get them to the museum later. What's left in the box is mostly some books, and I should be able to take all or most of those with me when we're back again at Christmastime.
We got back here on Sunday night. We were sooooo tired!! And then (wouldn't you know it?), the stupid carbon monoxide detector (wall plug-in unit) started beeping at 5 AM on Monday morning!! We bought it 10 years ago when we moved in, and I remembered the manual said it had a 10-year shelf life, and sure enough...! I found the manual, found the switch to turn it off and that was that -- but of course by then, we were pretty much awake. Needless to say, it was an early bedtime...!
We're still really tired, though. Extending the fatigue (lol): we spent Tuesday morning with the Little Great-Nephews (lol) -- SIL/their grandmother asked if we'd stay with them for a few hours while she went out for an appointment, and of course we said yes. They are/were pretty good, but noisy and full of energy. Dh spent half the morning chasing LGNephew #2 around the house. Then the little guy wrapped himself up in a blanket and conked out (on the floor!) before his grandmother got back -- and dh did likewise this afternoon when we got back home!
I tried to keep with reading and commenting on your blogs while I was away, but I will admit I was not very successful...! (Likewise, I barely looked at my social media accounts.) I'm hoping to catch up a little, now that I'm home.
(Did I say I was tired??) This eldercare stuff is not easy. (And my sister has been shouldering most of the responsibility for many years now. And Dad is in better shape than many elderly people, I know.) Kudos to all of you who have caregiving responsibilities of any kind!
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