Update on my Dad (Or.. Sometimes Life Just Sucks) posted 10/16/2009 10:39:50 PM | 2 kudos what's this?     report abuse tagged: family, sickness, hospital, parents

SnowLynx20

A couple of weeks ago, my dad went to the dentist. He does this regularly, twice a year to get his teeth cleaned. No big deal; except that his gums would not stop bleeding. About 14 hours later (still bleeding) he took himself to the emergency room. They told him that they couldn't do anything for him, that he should just go home and gargle with salt water. (You'd think, at a hospital emergency room, if someone came in bleeding for 14 hours without respite, they would at least run a simple CBC or clotting panel!) Anyway. He's been feeling a bit down, a bit tired & achy, a little sick. He went and got the Flu shot. Finally he was convinced that he should go to the doctor and have some blood tests run.
The next night, he got a call from his doctor saying he needed to go to this particular hospital, his platelet count was really low. Mom called me about 4 hours later as she was leaving the hospital, letting me know Dad had a condition called Thrombocytopenia (You guessed.. low platelet count). I was worried, but Mom assured me he was okay, so I decided to visit him next day after work.
Wednesday is one of my long days at work, open to close. It's also a multi-task day for me, I do some kennel work, some reception work, and some of my usual job as an assistant. Early that morning I got a call from Dad at the hospital. He's never been one to really beat around the bush with anything. After the usual greetings, he just came out with it. "Jamie," he told me with a big sigh, "I've got Leukemia."
After I scraped my jaw off the floor I pressed for some details, which he didn't have. They had told him, he said, but it just ran right back out of his head, lost in those first drastic words, "You have Leukemia." He couldn't remember what kind it was. I told him I'd see him after work, and went about the rest of my day in a bit of a daze. (Okay, probably more than a bit of one, but at least no one was unkind enough to point out any mistakes I made.) I visited as promised after work, and managed to corner one of the nurses long enough to get some information so I could research his condition on my own. Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia: What I learned reassured me a little, his type of Leukemia is supposedly 80-90% curable, and they do say "cure" in most of the literature, rather than "remission" or "treatable". But I also read that they usually institute treatment as soon as this type of Leukemia is even suspected, because "a sizable fraction of patients develop fatal hemorrhages during the diagnostic evaluation, before beginning antileukemic therapy, or during the first days of induction." [source: http://asheducationbook.he..matologylibrary.org/cgi/co..ntent/full/2006/1/147 ]
I hate to sound trite, but I really did get a little chill down my spine when I read that passage. I went to bed trying not to dream of complications. A quarter of six the next morning the phone rang and my heart sank. It was Mom, frantic. "The hospital called, they said your Dad is non-responsive. We have to get there. What does that even mean!?" Calming Mom down while I leapt out of bed and threw clothing on, I managed to let her know that I'd meet her at the hospital. A nurse met us on his floor, then took us to the floor that houses ICU. Dad had had a stroke early that morning, she told us, a good-sized bleed into his skull at the right frontal lobe. Did we know if he'd ever had a head injury in that area? No, not that we knew of. She took us in to see him: he was agitated, but mostly unconscious. He couldn't move his right leg or arm. I couldn't bear to stay in there for long; I spent most of that very long day sitting out in the waiting room, staring at the table in front of me, staring at the book I was trying to read, or napping in the slightly-uncomfortable chairs. I finally gave up about 8 o'clock and headed home, hoping for no midnight emergency calls.. or worse. I got two calls, one from my aunt at 10-something, letting me know they were giving him more platelets and another from my mother at 5:45 letting me know she was coming home to get some sleep before going back. I met Mom at her house and we drove up together today, news was good: he was awake, and talking some. Mom wasn't sure she believed it, because he wasn't talking before she left, and she'd only been gone a few hours. She had to run some errands, so I wound up staying in Dad's ICU room most of today. I was sitting in there, watching his facial reactions to whatever dream he was having when his eyes opened up and he actually looked at me. His eyes had been open before, but he didn't see what was there. This time, he did.
He saw me, and said, "Hey, Squirt," just like always. I didn't even try to hide my smile. "Hi, Daddy, how's it going?" "You should go home, you could be getting some work done." "Nah, I don't have anything else to do, so I'm here for now." "Oh. Alright then." (He tried to lift his hands, which were tied to the bed so he couldn't pull out any of the tubes attached to him) "Can you get me out of these?" "No, Daddy, you have to leave those on. You've been trying to pull out your tubes." "I am?"
Before I could answer, he was asleep again. Every time he woke up today, it was almost like a reset button had been pushed. He was more-or-less himself, but iffy on the details. He wasn't sure if he was in the hospital, or at work, or at my old elementary school. He thinks it's either 2005 or 2006, depending on when asked, but he was sure that Eisenhower was President. We sometimes couldn't understand what he was saying, and some of it didn't make sense, but it was certainly better than watching him silent and still, or thrashing in that bed. Nearly every time he woke, he asked if I could untie him, and seemed surprised when I told him why I couldn't. Sometimes he would just look at me with those child-like blue eyes and mutely lift his fettered hands in appeal.
It's going to be a long haul. If no more hemorrhaging takes place, he may get moved back to his original floor tomorrow. We're going to have to start Physical, Occupational, and Speech therapies while he's undergoing treatment for the Leukemia. He has to be in the hospital for a solid month for the Leukemia treatments. Not that he doesn't have enough to keep him busy now, with the multiple therapies.
I take heart from the fact that he was, at least, feeling himself enough to give his mom & mine a hard time when they asked him silly questions. I never asked him if he knew who I was, but they both did. When Grandma asked him, he shook his head no, then when she said "I'm your mama," he opened his eyes and said, "Oh. I see you now." When Mom asked him the same question, he told her, "Of course I know who you are, Jo Smith." Mom looked at me, eyes wide, then turned back to him with a "Who am I?" He smiled a lop-sided smile and said,"After 25 years, I should definitely know who you are."
I hope he sticks around a while.

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