A Little Better

The newest calf in Dad’s herd

Chris and I arrived at the hospital after Dr. W. had come in to talk to Dad. We were running late because a bad mama cow had come up for water without her baby, and we took a while to find it in the grazer patch and drive it back up to the shady water trough where the cattle like to hang out during the heat of the day. The last thing we wanted to have to tell Dad this morning was that we had lost his new calf.

Dr. W. had told Dad he had to stay another night in the hospital. Dad took this news with surprising aplomb. The he told us the CT scan had revealed no metastasis. Dr. W. says Dad has “a long time,” whatever that means. While I know he can’t predict the future, I’m much happier with “a long time” than I would be with “a few months.” Or less.

Some of the 23 bales of hay that awaited our return to the farm

By late afternoon, I was glad that they were keeping Dad another night. He woke up from his afternoon siesta in a very crotchety mood. He was down on everything. Yesterday’s surgery and a lack of deep sleep had caught up with him. He was too weak to get out of bed without help (never mind that he is 89, and many his age have trouble like this without the excuse of surgery—or cancer). He went through a litany of all things the medical profession had done to ruin his life. Then he got started on lawyers.

I hate it when he is unhappy like this. His pain pains me, too. So, I try to find something positive to say, but he wasn’t having anything to do with that. All I could do was sit quietly and listen without comment until he wore himself down. When he returned from a long phone call, Chris finally got Dad turned onto happier subjects.

We left shortly after dinner because Dad was tired and wanted to turn in early. We got back to the farm to find 23 round bales of hay had been baled in our absence—not bad for a 20 acre paddock being grazed by nine head.

…Just Not Today

Chris and Jim wait with me for Dad to wake up. This is very stressful for all of us, but Jim wears the strain more publicly.

I am at Citizens Hospital—now called Citizens Medical Center because it has expanded so much—in Victoria, Texas because Dad is having another probing session with Dr. W. It has been scheduled for months, but I don’t like taking chances by not being here.

I drove Chris and Dad in for the 06:00 appointment, which is an hour earlier than usual. (All that meant was we had more time to wait before the actual procedure would start.) Jim and Waynette drove in from Angleton. I came in last night, which meant I missed Suna’s return from North Carolina, where she went to help Kynan drive back from a summer internship with Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

Once they finally got started about 8:30, the procedure went a little longer than the expected hour. Dr. W. gave us the news in a small office off the waiting room. The tumors have continued to grow and now take up almost the entire volume of the bladder. He was able to resect much of the tumor on the left lateral wall, but the one on the right was too hard to cut. He had spent the extra time trying to clear as much of the tumors as he could.

He said Dad needs more radiation, but the radiologist says Dad has already had all the radiation he can take. Dad has already reacted badly to the milder form of chemotherapy available for this type of aggressive cancer. The remaining chemotherapy option probably won’t extend his life but would be seriously detrimental to his quality of life. Dr. W. wants to perform a CT scan tomorrow morning to see if any metastasis has occurred.

We all agree that whatever happens next is Dad’s call. Our only concern is to make the remainder of his long life as happy and comfortable as humanly possible.

It took longer for Dad to come out of recovery than we expected, too. Waynette and I began to worry that the delay might be caused by a recurrence of the painful bladder spasms that he experience on a previous procedure. Turns out we were right. That level of pain takes a lot out of Dad. We got him up to his room and went to lunch to allow him to sleep off the anesthesia in peace.

After lunch, we stayed in the waiting room until he woke up. Jim and Waynette went back to Angleton. Chris and I stayed with Dad to wait for Dr. W. to come by. When he did, he was more optimistic than he had been immediately after surgery, just not much. I can’t imagine what Dad is going through right now.

We stayed with Dad until his normal 21:00 bed time. We didn’t talk much on the way back to the farm. What is there to say?

A Day Waiting in the Hospital

Citizens as it looked when I was born. It’s more modern now, and it takes up more than a block.Photo source: Ancestry.com

I know I haven’t been keeping this blog up. But here’s the setup: Dad needed minor surgery, and I made the trip to wait with him. I had parked the RV there on a previous trip, so all I had to do was get there. This is the day of the surgery.

Early morning this! Dad needed to be at Citizens Hospital—it has now self-promoted to a Medical Center—around 07:30, so we had to be off about an hour earlier. That isn’t difficult for early risers like Chris and Dad, but for us former alleged musician types, it’s closer to the time we’d rather head for bed than the time we’re programmed to arise—no matter how much reconditioning we’ve done in the years since. We piled into the Black Dodge, and Chris was kind enough to stop for coffee before we got out of Yorktown.

We made it to the hospital and got dad checked into his waiting room. (His procedure would normally be day surgery, but The Doctor wanted to keep him overnight because of the remonteness of Da Farm. But nobody had told the hospital that. Or nobody who mattered.) And there we waited—Dad formost, but also Chris, my brother Jim, his wife Waynette, and me.

08:00

08:30

09:00

09:06—They came to take Dad away. We walked him to surgery. We were told the procedure would take a little less than an hour, and recovery would take another hour. Then we could find Dad in his Day surgery room. (Remember the bit about nobody telling the hospital about The Doctor wanting to keep Dad overnight?) So we went to breakfast, barely making it to the commissary before the gates (literal gates) were closed at 09:30.

For those of you unfamiliar with Victoria (and who really is?), the commissary at Citizens hospital is something else. Many locals make it an dining destination. So much for the myth of bad hospital food! We all had hearty American breakfasts filled with too much bacon and too many carbs. We ate like that one meal would have to hold us all day even though we didn’t yet know the truth of that.

10:15—We went back up to Surgery to wait for a status update.

10:25—The Doctor told us everything went well and he had taken “random biopsies” to check for any tumerous recurrances. We would just have to wait for Monday (if the stars align in a way that rearranges the fabric of space-time but doesn’t open a portal for the return of the Old Ones, and everything else goes well) or later (more likely) to know what the next steps in Dad’s treatment plan will be.

Citizens has an aquarium filled with really interesting fish like this neon blue thing. The aquarium is in the waiting area near my favorite napping spot.

11:15—We started asking where they will take Dad so we can be there. “The day surgery room where they got him from.”

“But,” we explained again, “The Doctor wants to keep him overnight.” Of course, nobody the people in surgery were aware of that. They directed us to Admitting. Admitting doesn’t know about post surgical room assignments. “That’s all handled by the Surgical nurse.” This time we asked a different Surgical Staffer, who verified that post surgical room assignments were indeed handled by Sugical Staff when the patient is ready to leave Recovery. A few minutes later, she tells us, “He'll be in 638. They’ll be bringing him out in a few minutes, and you can follow him up there.”

This little fella is waiting at the farm supply for someone to take him home. My friends tell me his name is Buford, and kids love to ride him and practice roping.

11:55—True to her word, a few minutes later, we saw Dad wheeling by and start to follow. But the elevator ws full. No worries; we kew the room number. We caught the next ride up to the sixth floor and begin looking for him. Unfortunately, there is no room 638. We all confirmed that we had all heard the same number. Then we found him in 628. He was still on another plane, phasing in and out of our reality, so we each told him we love him and we’ll let him sleep it off in peace. Then we drove off to buy fertilizer.

13:30—We found Dad still sound asleep and went downstairs to wait and inadvertantly nap.

15:00—We returned to find Dad somewhat awake. We spent the next few hours watching him gradually shake off the anesthesia and rejoin our world. We joked and told old stories and picked at each other mercilessly—you know: the kind of things families do to pretend they are not having the shit stressed out of them.

18:45—They brought Dad dinner. We made a show out of telling him what there was and getting the nutritionist to “sell him the menu” instead of just saying, “here’s food.” If you offer Dad something to eat, he’ll invariably say, “No, I’m not hungry right now.” But if you tell him what it is, he’ll realize he likes whatever is being served and start to take interest.

After getting him to eat a little of his dinner, we could that he was starting to get tired. We bid him a fond adeiu (or is it a bon fondu?) and headed off to eat too much at a new Chineese buffet. Our old favorite Chineese buffet is now a Mexican buffet—still run by the same Chineese staff. Imagine that.

20:15—We made it to the farm. Chris spread the fertilizer he bought earlier and put 400 gallons of water on the Jiggs he is sprigging over the pipeline right of way. Jim and Waynette went to bed in Dad’s trailer. Chris and I stayed up talking about nothing in particular until way too late.