12-22-05

Yesterday was our first good day in a very long time. Sheri Ford, the best "sitter" that ever existed, gave us our first glimpse that there could be a future. She also gave my mother her first peaceful night in 3 months.
Thank you Sheri.

But Sheri is home with her kids today. And she should be. It is ALL about family. I really is.
Unfortunately, no one else has been good for us. Today was a bad day. The roller coaster continues.
Today he was incoherent. He doesn't know why we keep pushing him to do things he doesn't want to do. He is very angry. He doesn't really know who we are either.
Yesterday he did. Today, he didn't.

Since this began, everyone said "Be the squeaky wheel. Be you're own advocate." My poor mother is a)exhausted, b)too tired to fight or even think clearly, c)hurting beyond comprehension, d) too close to the fire to see that it might be overcome.
Today, she gave up.
Tomorrow she may not. We don't know from one minute to the next.

I told her I wanted her to stop taking all the responsibility on herself. Let us do some. We'll come up and feed him. We'll stay in the room while she naps down the hall. We'll keep him safe for her so she can regain strength.
This she completely misconstrued as an attack.
We told her she needed to push the staff to feed him, bathe him, move him. She said the staff "is all so great and they're doing all they can and they have so many other patients to attend to." She also said I'm not in Houston so I don't know all the things she's had to do.

Maybe I'm not but I know for certain that they tell my mother what he can eat and she orders it and she begs him to eat. And he says no until she gives up. And no one is tracking what he's not eating. I read the folder. I READ it.
They allude to him having no appetite but they don't say, "He had less than 5 bites of food in this 24hr period."
They notate his albumin and protien levels.
Then the shift changes. Nothing else changes.

The shift that came in this morning wholly believed my father, who was out of bed yesterday and doing quite a bit better, was to be entirely bedridden now.

Anyway, I squeaked to the staff. I told them they cannot expect my mother to feed him or bathe him or move him or verify that my father is doing his hourly lung exercies. The staff would have to take those responsibilities in house!!
I told my mother to ask for help and to tell them what I did......but....that made me the enemy somehow.
Now I'm the bad-guy.
I don't want to be the bad-guy. I want us to be a team.
She has us blocked out though. She won't let us sit with him. She has decided that he is HER charge and we cannot possibly make good decisions for his care.

He is hers. His life is hers.
Oh dear God, she will live the rest of her days saying she "should have done..."
My heart aches from loss, from sadness, from care.
Mom...you just don't know how sorry I am - for everything you're going through.
I told you I'm sorry and I'm not mad...but you'll never forgive me. I know better.
I just want you to be stronger, healthier, safer and not alone.
Why do you have to do this alone?

It is wrong that I want to flee home, but I do.
I want to lay in my own bed and cry my own tears and not be a burden to anyone in the middle of this....tragedy.
You said to me tonight "You're father is not going to survive this."
A second later you say "when he gets home we can get a physical therapist to pick him up three times a week and take him to therapy"

I don't know what to believe. I hold this tiny little glimmer of hope so deep inside me...but you said it. Maybe to hurt me. Maybe to shock me. Maybe you think I'm in some kind of denial.
I'm not.
I'm in the same pain you are in. You've been married to him 41 years. You've never ever been on your own.
But I've known him all my life. I've never ever known life without him.
He's my father.
He's MY father.

I love you both more than there are words to describe it.
Don't shut me out.