Monthly Archives: February 2012

While Dad has been in Southwind, and now that he’s in the hospital, I live in a construction zone.  Lots of stuff has been thrown out, and more needs to be, yet the house is still piled with boxes and loose items — moving around in it is rather like navigating a maze.  In some cases, as with so many other things, you can’t get to point B from point A. Sometimes you have to go outside to get inside, at least in another area of the house.

Yesterday, I returned to the house, exhausted and ready to sleep.  That simply wasn’t possible — there were plumbers working under and around the house.  Tim the contractor and his father, who works with him, were working on flooring.  And wiring.  An air compressor filled the air with near-eardrum-shattering noise, accompanied by the nail gun it was powering.  Loudly powering.  Nail guns aren’t exactly quiet either.

At that point, I’d been up for about 30 hours or more.  Zombie time.  I’m amazed at how one manages to function with such sleep deprivation and under such stress.  So I sat at the computer; I tried to check on a few things.  I was too brain-fried to write coherently.  I could read only for short bursts of time.

In between those attempts to keep going, I talked to Tim as he discovered that wiring (probably the age of the house: 66) was crumbling in his hands as he attempted to wire a new motion light into the old wiring.  I could hear the frustration in his voice; I wasn’t surprised at the state of the wiring, though.

One of the realities of growing up in the household of an electrician: he works on everyone else’s stuff, but not really on his own.  I mean, for the first two years we lived in the house after we moved it and built on to it, a naked light bulb hung from the ceiling of the new half-bath.  That’s not uncommon with some craftsman, as others have told me similar experiences.

And for years now, as long as things worked, Dad just didn’t care about improving or even repairing things.  That’s typical, I think, with many people as they age.  Things fall apart.  But as long as they can still manage around those broken or damaged things, they do. In our house, as things fell apart or cracked, they were “fixed” with duct tape.  The most recent example came when I pulled out the duct tape to take care of what had started with the linoleum between the kitchen and dining room: it was coming apart at the seams.  Dad was tripping over the two curling pieces that should have been neatly glued into place.  The duct tape would at least secure the pieces together and keep them flat.  I too had succumbed to the duct-tape theory of construction.

Now, though, the new vinyl flooring will actually be glued properly onto the 1/2-inch plywood that covers the old linoleum.  Proper thresholds will cover and protect the joins from one room to another.

Slowly, slowly, the house is finally being renovated and renewed, for the first time since the fall of 1966.  My recent victories: convincing Dad that we really do need to spend the money on new carpeting in the kitchen.  And we do need to rewire the house.  Today my sister and I decided that we’d go one step further and put new floor covering in our bedrooms as well.  In my case, I want the new vinyl flooring float-laid rather than glued (Tim told me this is an option).  Kay wants the carpeting continued from the old living room/Dad’s new bedroom.  Those three rooms have beautiful wood floors that one day we hope to have refinished and polyurethaned.  They will be beautiful.  Mother covered them up because for years she had to polish them with wax polish and a then a buffer.  I remember how difficult and tedious that task was — because if she had to suffer, I did too, as young as I was.  I was her helper, albeit a non-voluntary one.

The bones of the house are solid, and it’s the covering of the bones that we’re improving now.  It’s fun, I’ll admit.  I get to pick out new flooring coverings, consult with Dad and Kay.  I am picking out carpet samples this afternoon and buying bathroom paint.  I’ve decided that as long as my bedroom will be empty at some point for the new flooring, I might as well paint the walls.  I’ve already got the paint, in fact, a lovely aqua.

If it seems selfish to make my bedroom nicer and to turn Dad’s old room into a sitting room/office/guest room, it’s because my new post-retirement life is being lived not in the house I own in Lake Charles, but in the one I spent my teenage years in.  My Lake Charles home waits, mid-renovation, for its own time.  I managed to get that house re-wired, finally, in January.  It still had the original wiring in place and in use in its attic, and my house was built in the 1920s.  Knob and tube wiring isn’t really up to code these days!  Right after Hurricane Ike, I had major projects done — replaced the galvanized pipes with the modern PEX system.  All the old/original windows (and there were lots of them, most of them long) were replaced with energy-efficient ones.  The shiplap wood siding came off, actual insulation went up, and was covered by fiber-cement Hardie siding.

I still need to paint the new siding (which fortunately came primed).  I still need to sheetrock the water-damaged walls of the living room, and replace some damaged sheetrock on the ceiling of my bedroom there.  The bathroom ceiling needs to be replaced with bead-board paneling and a new ceiling light.  The kitchen remains half-painted.  The kitchen needs new flooring. Those projects in Lake Charles will get done, slowly, though after the Egan work is completed.

In finding Tim, I think I’ve found the contractor to help me complete those projects in Lake Charles, too, since it’s only a 45-minute drive away.  He says he would be willing.

In the meantime, I get to indulge the inner decorator, the one who watches far too much HGTV.  It’s fun, and I am, after all, spending Dad’s money (though frugally and wisely, I hope).

When he comes home from Southwind, it will be to a renewed, lovely (and safe) home that isn’t so totally different that he won’t recognize it.  His trophy fish and the two deer heads will still decorate what was the living room and will be his bedroom.  We need the Bambis, after all, to remind us of who we are and have been (my niece hates it when we call those heads “Bambi”).  My brother and Dad had years of sharing a deer lease in West Texas, time they spent with cousins and each other.  The two deer heads may appall some people, but not us.  And by the way, I am a liberal who thinks hunting is necessary — we didn’t kill for the sake of killing.  We eat venison.  And fish.  If Dad and Phil didn’t get any deer, in some ways that was okay, because they’d spent the time together.  Phil sometimes just took his camera and photographed the area.  The two deer heads even got decorated at Christmas, along with our Christmas tree.  So those deer heads, and the fish, and the small antler collection in the room that was Phil’s, will remain.  The many photographs of us kids as we grew up and of our family will still decorate walls and most flat surfaces.

Pluses for me:  the satisfaction of overseeing the changes, of aiding the rebirth of this home. The fun of decorating.  And the fun of living in the construction zone of a house that looks as though it’s the house of a hoarder.  True, I get to indulge in making some room for myself to live in with an office space and some crafting space (in Phil’s old room, there is a huge old office desk he used to work on — perfect for my jewelry-making and for other crafts).  Kay will have nice new carpeting in her bedroom and will get to enjoy real showers again, in either of two very nice showers and totally up-to-date bathrooms.

Most importantly, Kay and I get the satisfaction of having made the home safe and comfortable for Dad.

Only some superficial changes will be evident — not the bones of the house, not the home that still retains the memories we cherish. And the memories we’re creating now, in lives shared once more in the house that we once lived in together when all five of us were here.

Day Two:  No breakfast after all.  No room at the Crowley hospital, either.

Dad stayed in the ER until nearly 5 a.m.  In that time, most of the others around us were released to leave or were admitted.  Others came and went, too.  Next to us: a mother and her two young daughters, one still a toddler; they were all sick, apparently.  The baby cried on and off.  The older daughter whined about a shot hurting.  One of the nurses instructed the mother on how to properly care for diaper rash so that it wouldn’t get infected; the baby had a shot of antibiotics, and then apparently decided to drop a full load just as the nurse was checking her.  I could smell the result even in our little cubicle.  I could also hear the nurse make gagging sounds.

The ER doctor tried to tell us that maybe Dad had an infection.  Clearly, he hadn’t read anything on the chart.  I filled him in.  He really didn’t listen to me much. Instead, the ER doctor decided that Dad was having a heart attack — elevated cardiac enzymes.  Absolutely no chest pain, or indeed any other discomfort at all.  After a long long night in the Crowley hospital ER, we were transported to Lafayette, to the ER at Lafayette General Hospital.

Arriving at 5:30 a.m. or so, we were immediately put into yet another small cubicle.  The ER doctor here had more blood drawn and yet more cardiac enzyme tests — and decided that no, in fact, Dad was not having a heart attack.  This doctor was much more concerned about the abscessed area of the dialysis graft and about sepsis.  He decided to admit Dad and call in a nephrologist.

At 7:30 a.m., a nurse came around for perhaps the fourth time and asked whether transportation had come for us yet.  I had to refrain from saying “DUH, I guess not.”  Instead, I simply said “no, not yet.”

The electronic monitor (no longer connected to anything) alarmed every 2 minutes, alerting someone — anyone — to check the electronic leads that were no longer connected.  Maybe no one else heard the alarm, but somehow I doubt that.  I simply got up and punched the “silent” button more times than I can remember.  By the end, I was muttering four-letter obscenities every time I hoisted my weary body out of the chair and punched the damned button one more time.  I contemplated hitting the machine. I considered unplugging it to see whether anyone would even notice.  I did neither.  I just resigned myself to a Twilight-Zone existence that consisted of sitting down, trying to nap, being awakened by the alarm, hitting the “silent” button, sitting down, trying to nap. . . .

It is now 8:15 a.m., and only 10 minutes ago were we finally transferred to a room.  Actually, we are in a room other than the one we were initially assigned to – – there was no bed in the first room.  So here we are, and I have just given Dad’s medical history for yet another time.  Asked if I had Dad’s medicine, I just looked at the nurse and told her no, but that there should be a medical history since one had come with him. She asked if he had a living will and a DNR and a power of attorney; I answered yes to all and told her that there were copies made of those documents while we were down in ER.

Now here we are 30 miles away from Dad’s primary physicians and waiting once more.

Dad is sleeping in a bed.  I am in a chair.  Not one that pulls out, either — or at least not one that pulls out any more (if it ever did).

There’s a contractor at the house (I think our neighbor let him in again today).  At some point he’s expecting a check for materials, so at some point I’ve got to get a check to him.  Of course, since I came in the ambulance with Dad, I have no vehicle.  The truck is still in the parking lot at the hospital in Crowley.

Most of the people we’ve dealt with have been very nice, though at times I felt no one was paying attention.

Small towns are wonderful.  I can trust that neighbors (who have a key to the house) will open the house for the contractor.  I can trust that the contractor will just work on what we’d agreed on, and that the plumber he has today will leave us with no galvanized pipes from 1946 and lots of lovely new PVC connections.  I trust that the sheetrock will be taped and mudded and floated.  I trust that showers will be completed, that lighting will be installed, that flooring will go down on new plywood.

And in the ER here, it turned out that the ER doctor is from Lake Charles, and I recognized his last name.  The nurse, it turns out, actually lives in Egan, not far from us.

Thirty miles really isn’t that far after all, in some ways.  In others, it’s lightyears away.

Just when everything seemed to be fine….

Today was a dialysis day, so I knew I had time to go to Lowe’s to pick up a few more things for the contractor for tomorrow before I headed to Southwind to meet Dad for supper. I shopped for shower faucets, a medicine cabinet, and new light fixtures. Drove a mile or so to Southwind, parked the truck, walked into Dad’s room, and expected to see him tired and perhaps sleeping.

Instead, he was lying in bed, eyes open and staring at the ceiling, and mouth open. I took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the bed, holding his hand. “Dad? Dad?” No response. I reached up and touched his face, called his name– still nothing. I got up, bent over him and cupped his face in both my hands, turning his face toward me. “Dad? Do you know me? Do you know who I am?” Once again, no response.

After five minutes or so, he responded a bit, though it seemed as if he were trying to talk and couldn’t. Slowly–and I have no idea how long this took– he spoke a bit in response, saying he knew me. The phone rang, and I answered. Our friend Billie wanted to talk to him, and after I filled her in and held the phone to his ear. He answered her questions slowly.

When she hung up, I put the phone down and told Dad I would be right back. At the nurses’ station, I quickly told the nurse what was up and asked her whether anyone had noticed or remarked on Dad’s condition. Yes, she said– they’d noticed his confusion upon his return from dialysis. Oh, and had the dialysis clinic told me that he had an abscess? They had started him on Vancomycin there, sent himback to Southwind with a prescription for another antibiotic, and made an appointment with Dad’s surgeon for the abcessed graft–for Thursday morning.

The nurse came back to Dad’s room, checked his oxygen saturation level, took his blood pressure, and took his temperature. Sat level: up to 94 from the previous check. BP: fine. Temperature: 101.5!

NOT fine. From previous experience,we have come to know that by the time Dad registers a fever, the infection has really been in the graft for quite a while.  After calling his doctor and talking to her partner, who was on call tonight, the staff watched Dad for an hour. Nothing changed, and as the doctor had directed, they sent Dad to ER to be admitted.

And thus began tonight’s adventures in ER-land.

First of all, it was packed. A full house. I could hear two (two and a half?) languages: Spanish, English, and Cajun English. Two hours later, I was still waiting. Yet more people had turned up.

I sat next to a man who had brought his mother or mother-in-law in. He was from somewhere near Kaplan, and his accent was markedly Cajun, but easy for me to understand. He told me a lot about her troubles, indicating that she had had some previous strokes. He sat next to a small white-haired elderly woman in a wheelchair. She never said anything as he talked.

A young Hispanic couple checked in as I was finally called up to sign some paperwork. I could hear the admitting clerk ask for their ID, their Social Security cards (they didn’t have any). But their child had one–though the mother didn’t know the number. The admitting clerk explained about billing. The young mother asked something about their insurance, and the clerk said that the policy was for the patient/family to pay the bill and then submit the paperwork to the insurance company for reimbursement. The young couple sat down and began filling out lots of paperwork.

In the meantime, three women came in–one a silver-haired woman in bloodied white slacks and a Walk for the Cure t-shirt, also bloodied. A blue washcloth sat on top of her head.  After a while, two more women and a man joined them.

Another guy in the ER recognized him and as they talked, it was clear that he had recently left law enforcement. They chatted.

While all this was going on, a young boy kept popping the door open from ER itself–he was perhaps 4 or 5 and had a neck brace on.

The former  law enforcement officer talked to the clerk, whom he clearly knew, then came back and told us that there had been a wreck involving at least six people, a lot of them little children.

By this time, we were all talking. The mother had fallen and cut her head. Two of the women were her daughters; one was a daughter-in-law; one was a granddaughter.

People began pouring out of the ER–maybe 8 adults and children, talking Spanish and English. I didn’t see the little boy with the neck brace.

Then another man came out, leaving with the man who’d been talking to the law enforcement guy. Oh, and that law enforcement guy had a little glitter on his forehead–not surprising since he wore a t-shirt advertising a local flower shop, and it’s just a few days after Mardi Gras. The family store? Probably, since part of their conversation seemed to be about what products they had switched to for netting.

The ER was so full at one point that a woman sat in the corridor outside the ER waiting room. The security guard went over to her twice, telling her she wasn’t supposed to sit there. Another woman, holding an infant, joined her. The young woman finally got up, arranged her purse and a blanket, and moved to the other waiting room, never saying a word.

Finally I was allowed into the ER area itself, where I joined my dad. Happily, he was much more alert. He asked how I had found him, and when I told him that I had followed the ambulance and been with him, he was surprised. Didn’t remember anything.

At least two people at different times went in to the cubicle next to ours and talked to a man there; that man has gone.

I heard a young woman asking when she was going to see anyone, and whether she could just leave. Someone finally saw her, I guess.

I think I heard the older woman who fell and cut her head. I think she is gone too.

One nurse came in over an hour ago and took Dad’s temperature. No one has been in our cubicle since then. It is now just after 11pm, and I have been here with Dad since 9:45. The guy in the next cubicle is still here after all–now he’s talking to a nurse.

Dad is sleeping. I am typing.

The ER is still full, despite the car accident crew having cleared out.

I can hear the Cajun man at times, so they’re now in here too.

And the lady who fell and cut her head is still here too.

But each of us is curtained off –providing an illusion of privacy. And it’s quieter now.

The ER is full.

The shift is changing.

The moon isn’t full tonight, either.

And still I sit. Dad’s still sleeping–I wish I could!

Maybe we’ll get a room at some point tonight.

In the meantime, I guess I will eat the cold cheeseburger I thought to buy on my way here.

P.S. : at 11:30,they finally took a chest x-ray and ran an EKG. A med tech drew blood about ten minutes ago.

And I was admonished about the cheeseburger. I violated some policy, apparently. So the unbeaten half is wrapped up and shoved back in its bag with the cold French fries. I refused to throw them away.

At the rate we’re going here, we might not have a room before morning anyway.

I’ll finish the burger for breakfast.

It’s amazing to me how much more I appreciate road time spent not for the purpose of getting to a doctor’s visit or to dialysis or to visit Dad at Southwind.  Driving for myself, even just driving to Lake Charles or to Houston, provides me with the sheer pleasure of a road trip, no matter how brief.

Luckily, I love to drive- I always have.  And when I say “always,”I mean just that. Some of my earliest memories revolve around cars.  I remember the first car my parents had-and standing up in the back (in that Plymouth coupe there wasn’t a real back seat for adults, but a little kid could stand there and my head was close to the sloping roof. ) Or I could sit with the window open and throw things out, such as my pacifier.  That always precipitated a visit to the local grocery store to replace it.  Yes, I remember those moments, the sensation of the wind on my hand or my head touching the car lining of the sloped roof.

Or the memory of riding in a convertible at the age of 6, perched on the back of the car with my feet dangling into the back seat, my beautiful hooped skirt spread around me as I waved to the crowds at the Crowley Rice Festival as a little princess from Egan Elementary. Frankly, the experience of riding in the convertible was more exciting to me than being in the little queen contest.  I attribute later ownership of a Mazda Miata and now a Mini Cooper convertible directly to this opportunity–and to watching lots of “Route 66” episodes on television.

Maybe my love of driving goes back even earlier, though. When I was born in Beaumont, Texas, my parents lived on Detroit Street, and that clearly influenced the birth announcement they wrote announcing the new 1951 model, with squealing lungs.

Here in Egan, too, I am reminded of when and where I learned to drive: at the age of 8 or 9, on the road by the now-defunct baseball field. I learned on a 1955 Chevy Bel Air automatic, the very first attempt marked by flooding the engine and having to walk home with Dad. (Teaching me was not sheer indulgence, but a practical measure for Dad- if Mother had a panic attack, someone had to be able to drive home.) Shortly after this, I learned to drive the 1956 Chevy truck at Grandad’s farm. It was a stick shift with the stick shift on the wheel; to this day my right hand can go through the shifting motions for that.

Driving was this tied at an early age to responsibility, but also to sheer pleasure.

Now, I get into the car, plug in my iPod, and select appropriate road music . For my trip to Houston last week, I selected Townes Van Zandt, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, the Dixie Chicks, Kinky Friedman, Nanci Griffith,Guy Clark and Steve Earle. I cranked up the sound and sang along, song after song, through songs of sadness and tears and anger and sheer love of beauty and love.

Driving soothes me, isolates me to the moment, allows me to process emotions and events through the songs that shuffle as I drive.   Road trip driving is a very Zen experience. Sometimes I put the roof down so that the wind and sun pull me into the world.  Sometimes I keep the roof up, enclosing me and cocooning me with music and warmth.

Yesterday I drove to Lake Charles to the new Adele cd, thrilling to her voice and song-writing abilities. I was reminded of romance and lost love–and survival.

For brief spells I am afforded the space and time to drive out frustrations or anger or confusion or hurt or loss. Or just to drive for the love of it, the freedom.

Always, though, the road that goes on forever, that goes out and away, also leads back home, and I turn the engine off, step out of the car and lock it, refreshed in spirit if tired in body. Yesterday I drove for escape to my life in Lake Charles. Tomorrow I will drive to the very person who gave me the gift of driving.

I retired from university teaching in May 2011.  For years, my plans geared me to being able to retire at 60 and then be free to travel any time I wanted to travel, not just at semester breaks.  I could teach part-time, take students abroad if possible, even teach on-line.  And of course, there would be ample time now for writing all those half-started essays and books.

Nope.  Not quite.

Some background: My mother died in 1993, and since then Dad has lived on his own.  He managed his own house in Egan, Louisiana, and worked with his sister to maintain the family farm in East Texas.  I always joked that my dad actually clocked more road time than I did.  Well into his 80s, Dad still maintained the schedule of a trip to the farm every two weeks.  Even after going on dialysis and having cardiac bypass surgery in 2004, he kept going.  He drove himself to dialysis.  He shopped and kept the house up and drove to the farm and worked there –just a little slower as time passed.  For the last few years, my sister and I had talked about things we noticed:  he was a little more unsteady on his feet, for example.  And the house wasn’t kept as clean as it had been.  But Dad just kept going.

Then infections with the dialysis graft in his arm began to occur — the first one serious enough that we worried whether we’d lose him or he’d lose his arm. I taught online for a week and stayed in the hospital with him.  This became the pattern that marked my life for the last years of my career.  Dad went into hospital for a few days; I slept on the couch or chair or whatever and taught online and commuted.

My sister helped as she could — but she lives almost three hours away and I live only 45 miles away from Dad.

The last two semesters that I taught, though, things changed.  He was in the hospital more frequently, and came out weaker than before.  I stayed with him more and more.  I commuted a lot.  More than I wanted.  I love driving, but learned that I hate daily commuting. I kept some clothes and necessities at Dad’s, but still considered that I was “visiting” him.  In February or March last year (over Mardi Gras break, I know), Dad drove himself to the hospital emergency room in Crowley with pain and amazing constipation; the hospital admitted him and failed to notify either my sister or me, though I am listed to be contacted.  In fact, he was there several days before we knew where he was, and though he was still confused and disoriented, were ready to release him when my sister and I managed to get there. The confusion was new, and disturbing, but sadly not uncommon with geriatric patients. He recovered, but was weaker than before.

Then in May, just before I retired, he developed pneumonia and ended up in the hospital.  I uploaded my final grades from his room. He was released from the hospital and hasn’t driven since. He came home on oxygen.  I began retirement with a new job.  Daddy’s Little Helper.

Even then, though, I managed to spend a few days a week in Lake Charles, at my own home, with my pets and my life.  Neighbors helped me out.  Dad was using a walker (most of the time, anyway).  He cooked meals (though I suspect he ate a lot of sandwiches) and washed clothes.  He wasn’t driving, and he didn’t like it.  I even managed to spend six weeks in Greece in the summer.  In September, I spent a week in London with friends.

However, I could see that Dad was weakening.  He tripped more.  He fell, but luckily didn’t break anything.  In late October, we traveled to the farm for a family work weekend.

That was when some little voice told me to travel while I could:  and I did.  The day after Thanksgiving, I left for three weeks — most of it in Athens, and then four days in London on the return.

The little voice was right: four days before I returned, Dad tripped on his oxygen tubing.  From then through the end of December, his pain increased daily and so did his ability to ambulate.  By the end of December, he moaned in pain and needed help dressing because he could barely lift his legs.  After three weeks and three tests, the diagnosis came in:  he had an L1 compression fracture.   By the time he had kyphoplasty to stabilize the compression fracture, he needed me to dress him and feed him and bathe him.  The kyphoplasty went well on a Tuesday; we came home on Wednesday.  By Monday, it was clear that something was going on — Dad was increasingly confused.  On Monday I picked him up from dialysis, got him to his doctor, and she put him in the hospital.  By that night, he was delusional.  Even when he was briefly asleep, he was active — climbing poles and pulling wire, from years of work as an electrician. When awake, he talked incessantly.  To his late brother and cousins.  To me, warning me about not running over the dogs in the road.  He pointed to the ceiling; he saw turkeys in fields.  He tried to climb out of the hospital bed more times than I could keep track of. By Wednesday the doctor ordered something to relieve the anxiety, and it worked.  He slept on Wednesday night and so did I. Finally.  He came home on Friday, the lingering confusion cleared over the next few days, and on the following Thursday I admitted him to a nursing home for rehabilitation.

While he’s there, I’m having the house made wheelchair accessible.  As I type this blog, contractors are ripping out bathtubs and old linoleum.

I am no longer under the illusion that I live in Lake Charles, not really.  I live here in Egan, with Dad, and I visit my old home in Lake Charles.  For now.

And so this blog:  it’s a brave new world, and I’m discovering myself daily, re-inventing myself, and cherishing the gift of time with Dad.