RIP D A D

I've been thinking about resurrecting the old Cud for a while now but finally everything came to a head.

My dad died January 9, 2019.

A couple of years ago he slipped stepping off the curb at a restaurant and fell and broke his hip. At least everybody said he broke his hip. It was really his femur, but way up his leg where it might as well be his hip. After that he alternated periods at home with periods in a nursing home.

It didn't help that during his first stay in a nursing home, when he was just about well enough to go home, he ended up spending a short stay in the hospital. Where the nurses tried to weigh him in the middle of the night and ended up dropping him, breaking his leg again just a little farther down from where the femur broke the first time.

Oops.

I think after that he felt like he was safer if he just stayed in his wheelchair and didn't try walking. His balance wasn't very good, I think he broke his glasses so his vision wasn't very good, and he was having problems with his legs. His lower legs and feet swelled up like water balloons due to a combination of sitting in his wheelchair all day and a side effect of congestive heart failure. Plus I think he had nerve problems in his legs and feet that affected his ability to tell if he was stable or tipping over so why take a chance? Just stay in his wheelchair and scoot around the house and only take a risk standing up when he had to go to the bathroom.

It didn't help that Mom has medical problems of her own. A couple of years ago she started having back pain. She went to several doctors looking for relief. Finally a doctor found out what was causing her back pain.

Breast cancer.

10 or 20 years ago she had breast cancer and ended up getting a mastectomy. As far as I can remember she had some form of chemo but not radiation, but I could be wrong. They warned her that it could come back.

Metastatic breast cancer.

Nobody mentioned that one of the prime spots for breast cancer to metastasize is your back. I mean, you would think the other breast would be the logical spot, or maybe up in your armpit.

Not your back.

But yeah, my mom has titty cancer in her back.

Top that internet.

Considering both my mom and grandmother had breast cancer my sister and I have been checking up on the twins on a regular basis. I have to admit, I haven't been as regular with my breast exams as I should be. It's just nice to pretend it won't ever happen to me.

But of course it could.

Luckily, both of us have been cancer free so far, but it's always there in the back of my mind.

Maybe.

Maybe next time I get checked the doctor will call and tell me I have to come in. She has something to tell me. Something she doesn't want to tell me over the phone.

Or maybe my sister will call me.

I honestly don't know which would be worse.

The Man saw something about breast exams on the news one night. It showed the basics of how they smash your boobs in a big x-ray machine. He said if anybody every did that to his junk he'd punch them right in the face.

Maybe after he finished rolling around on the ground crying like a little baby.

Anyway, my dad was a pretty big man, and my mom is a short little gnome of a lady, so even if her back was in perfect shape she couldn't lift him up if he needed help getting out of his chair, or heaven forbid fell again. She stressed about him day and night. Afraid he'd fall down when she was home alone with him. Afraid to go to the store or the doctor and leave him alone. Afraid he'd get up while she was sleeping and fall down and she wouldn't know anything about it until she woke up.

Surprise!

She even got him one of those devices that sets off an alarm if you fall, but she worried about him forgetting to put it on, or the battery dying, or a thousand other things going wrong.

A couple of weeks ago he ended up going back to the nursing home because he was really weak and had a hard time getting out of his chair. He didn't seem to mind being there very much. He'd been there several times so it wasn't exactly a shock to his system. I'm sure he didn't like being there, but he accepted the fact that he was there and if he wanted to go back home he had to get with the program. They were giving him physical therapy and he was showing intermittent progress, between days when he just didn't have the energy to do anything but lay in bed or sit in his chair and nap or watch TV.

But then they started having trouble keeping his oxygen level up, so Tuesday he ended up going back to the hospital. My nephew Dan called to let us know what was up. Nothing big, same old same old.

It seemed like just another trip to the hospital.

Where they decided he had pneumonia. And sepsis. And his oxygen was too low and his carbon dioxide was too high.

Other than that everything was fine.

Mom and Dan left the hospital and barely got back home when the hospital called. Dad was unresponsive and having trouble breathing. Did Mom want them to put him on a ventilator? If they didn't he might not make it through the night, but if they did he might not be able to get off it. Trapped in the hospital, hooked up to a bunch of machines.

No.

Nobody wanted that. Not me, not Mom, definitely not Dad.

So we all rushed back to the hospital. By the time we got there he had stabilized. Mom said when she got there he was awake and recognized her, but by the time I got there he was out of it.