Changes Pt. 6

Those of you who come from the other blog know all this, but those of you who don't...

My father fell on the concrete garage floor in the afternoon of December 11, 2008. He was unconcious for a few seconds, and my mom called the EMT's. They came, got him up and into the house, but he refused to go to the ER. A few hours later he was getting more and more drowsy, slurring his words, etc, and finally told her to call them back before he lost conciousness once more ... and never recovered.

He was on a blood thinner and had bleeding on the brain from his fall. He had surgery that night to relieve pressure, but he never did come out of the coma and was in intensive care for over a month on a vent and all his signs deteriorated to the point we finally had to move him into Hospice and withdrew extreme care until he passed away a week later.

During this time, my mother also fell and broke a rib and punctured her lung, being hospitalized a few floors from my dad.

When she got out of the hospital she couldn't care for herself, so I moved out of town to stay with her. At that point, my husband and I had been getting closer than ever and he had looked into more medication - which, ta-da! , worked. After I'd been at my mom's for three days and trying to care for her, still taking her to the hospital daily to visit my dad (not yet put into hospice) and long-distance caring for my family and husband (all my kids are grown by now - thank goodness) - it became a flashback for my husband and he was going into panic mode. He called up my daughter and started going on and on about how this was just like California and I was never coming back... etc. He talked to her for three hours and she was trying to get him theoretically "talked off the ledge".

On that third day I accepted that he was not going to last much longer at home without me. I just had known how much he hated hospitals, so knew he'd be bored stiff just sitting around dad's room waiting for him to wake up...



...to be continued...