Taking Care of Parents and Retiring at the Same Time

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald on 2020-01-16.

Many people my age are trying to figure out how to care for aging parents with retirement staring them in the face. Some of us have already dealt with those issues. Some have it all sorted. Some don’t know where to start.

As this column goes along, I’ll talk more about helping elder parents—or ourselves—stay at home longer and remain more independent while doing so. Today, I just want to introduce myself and say a word or two about my new company, Hearts, Homes, and Hands.

As you can tell from the byline, my name is Ernest Lee Bruns. I’m a junior. I chose to retire from the corporate world several years ago when I was caring for my father, who was in the last stages of cancer.

Dad taught me a lot about perseverance and tenacity. He always said, “Don’t let that old rockin’ chair get you.” He didn’t. He planted and cared for forty acres of corn the year he died. He was 92 years old, and this was his second bought with cancer. When he was in the hospital for the last time, he was more worried about his corn than anything else. The first thing he asked when he came out from his final round of chemo was about the yield.

When the doctors allowed him to go home to die, my nephew Chris and I knew we had more on our hands than we could handle and still do this wonderful man justice—even with the help of hospice and home health. Chris hired a personal assistance service to help with bathing and other needs.

I’m proud to say Dad died at home, surrounded by people who loved him and cared for him. He could look out his bedroom window and see the house where he was born 92 years before.

When Sue Ann and I started planning how we would wind down our final years without putting an undue burden on the kids, we were surprised to find out there wasn’t a state licensed and insured personal assistance service (PAS) around. From where we live, the closest ones were in Bryan/College Station or Temple. Standard has the home health and hospice support covered, but if we needed help staying at home—help with housekeeping, running errands, cooking, bathing, and so on—we’d either have to ask the kids to give up part of their lives or hire someone privately.

When you hire individuals, you’re responsible for their unemployment insurance, for their medical bills if they get hurt in your service, and for finding a replacement if they fail to show up. None of this is something we wanted to do while we were struggling to take care of ourselves or each other. You have enough on your mind at that point without worrying about finding someone to help your loved one get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

We called my niece Kathleen to see if she wanted to help us start a PAS. She had been the administrator of the PAS Chris hired to help take care of Dad and had more than a decade of experience running a successful PAS in Victoria. She and Chris fell in love and got married the year after Dad died, but that’s another story. She came up to Cameron; we came to agreement; and Hearts, Homes, and Hands was born.

Hearts, Homes, and Hands is licensed and regulated by the state of Texas. We are responsible for providing the care you need. We’ll be there for you, even if the person originally scheduled has a “family emergency” or something and can’t show up. We cover their workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance if they get hurt and do everything necessary to ensure your peace of mind—at least with regard to caring for yourself or a loved one.

And the bottom line is this: I’m not just an owner of the company, I’m a client. We take care of you like we take care of our own—in this case, Sue Ann and me.

Aging: Denial, Acceptance, and Heroism

Dad never did let that rockin’ chair get him. Here he is stretching fence at 90.

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2019-11-27.

So buy him a drink and lend him an ear

He's nobody's fool and the only one here

Who remembers the smell of the black powder smoke

And the stand in the street at the turn of a joke

— Guy Clark

There is a perception that getting older means we are somehow less than we were when we were younger. The memories and stories of our elders get discounted as ramblings, the lessons they could teach lost to many younger listeners.

While we eventually reach the point where we need help, a long life is an accomplishment, something to be proud of. Perhaps that’s why people go to great lengths to deny their true age. For example, Suna’s father cared for an elder woman who claimed to be 104. When she died, it came out that she was really 108, but she felt it was important to she maintain the fiction of being younger than she was.

And my dentist is the same age I am, almost to the day. But I sometimes have trouble taking him seriously. His hair is the color of shoe polish, and he has obviously had “work done” on his face—probably a combination of face lifts and Botox®. According to MedicalNewsToday, “Botox is a neurotoxin … used to reduce fine lines and wrinkles by paralyzing the underlying muscles.” Why anyone would poison themselves in a failed attempt to look younger is a mystery to me. And it undermines his credibility as a health advisor. But he is an excellent oral surgeon, and I keep reminding myself of that fact.

When we get older, we get older. I’m eternally grateful to my parents for instilling this sense of realism in me. I am the youngest of six. My mom was 36 when I was born. So, by the time I was in high school, they were looking seriously at retirement. Our kitchen table was lined with forged trivets conveying such messages as, “Don’t regret growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.”

Admittedly, I thought this aging advice was embarrassing at seventeen. But I still remember it in my sixties. Maybe that’s why I feel accepting of my own aging. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Even without denying our aging, we can still take steps to prolong our health and independence. My dad worked hard his whole life. He always advised me, “Don’t let that rockin’ chair get you.” The Spring before he died at 92, he planted 40+ acres of corn. His last hospitalization came at harvest, and he was more concerned about the harvest and yield than his own treatment. He knew he was dying and accepted it. So, he focused on what mattered to him.

This grandma fought off a home invader by herself! Not all of us have the ability or the confidence to do that. Photo by ABC News

This morning, I learned of an inspirational woman on the news. At 82, Willie Murphy beat a home invader badly enough to put him in the hospital. When the cops showed up, they took selfies with her. She said, “He picked the wrong house to break into.” Amen, sister! “I think he was happy when he went in the ambulance.”

Not all of us are body builders, but we can all do something. My neighbor across the road walked three miles a day—every day—well into her eighties. When she succumbed to cancer, she went down fighting, but she went down with grace.

All of us face challenges every day. These basically fall into two categories: those that are within our sphere of control and those that are not. All I can hope is that I continue to work on thing things I can change and accept those I can’t. I hope I’m never too proud to accept help when I need it.

If you find you need help with some of the things you used to be able to do, Hearts, Homes, and Hands is here to provide that help.

Animal Lovers

Jaime’s son holds the turtle they “rescued.”

We have hummingbirds!

Hummingbird don’t fly away, fly away.

Don’t fly away.

—Jim Seals, Dash Crofts

Jaime’s whole family works on his crew. They’re all nice people, and they’re all animal lovers.

On the way in this morning, they saw a turtle crossing the road and “rescued it.” They brought it to the ranch and put it in the front pond.

You know who else is an animal lover? My dad, who turns 92 today. Happy birthday, Dad.

 

Hate Is Not a Family Value

I wish more churches preached this message. It is more in line with the actual teachings of Jesus than the hateful rhetoric spewed from many pulpits.
Apparently, Cabela's is the place to go for plastic kayaks.

Dad wanted to eat lunch at Sonic, so we drove to Cuero. I parked facing the sign on the Calvary Baptist Church, which featured a message I wholeheartedly endorse: “Hate is not a family value.” Since I didn’t hear the service, I hope they actually meant it and weren't just trying to co-opt a liberal message.

Since Dad is doing OK, I came on home. I took the “scenic route” which lead me to Cabela’s big store in Buda. It failed to live up to my memory of the Nebraska store, but that could be the fault of memory. It did have many, many kayacks. Wandering around the store for what seemed like hours left be with this impression: The people of Cabela’s are not that different from the People of WalMart, just better armed.

I eventually made it home after a nice meander through south Austin.

One More Year

Texas Icons: Cotton and Oil
or
Biodiesel in the raw

The drive down to see Dad was uneventful. We had lunch at Edgar and Glady’s in Nordheim. The food was not very good, but Dad loved it and that’s what matters.

On returning to the farm, we sat down to chat in the living room. I eventually dozed off in the chair closest by the air conditioner, the only spot in the room cool enough for water to remain liquid—Dad likes it hot. When I awoke, he had gone out to plow. I stretched out on the floor to finish waking up and get my legs working again. That old chair is not meant for long sitting spells.

Dad plowed under a small section of fence. While he didn’t want to fix it today, he did need help blocking it so the cattle don’t get loose. We used baling wire to secure a gate and a cattle panel across the gap, proving once again that you can fix almost anything with bailing wire and bubble gum.

That bit of exertion tuckered him out so much he wouldn’t eat anything for dinner except a small bowl of ice cream. Even so, his general condition is good, and his attitude is better. He is planning crops for next year, and he was genuinely put off when a neighbor asked, “So you’re gonna farm one more year?” I reminded him the guy was only parroting what Dad had been saying for more than twenty years.

“I know,” Dad said. “But it sounds so final when he says it.”

Home Again

Dad is home again.

The new calf was not with its mama at the water trough this morning. Its absence is concerning because calves born this time of year often do not survive the heat. Chris and I searched for it in the grazer. We finally found it hidden among the tall stalks. It didn’t take a lot of herding to get it back with mama.

When we got to the hospital, Dr. W had already released Dad to go home. Two bits of really good news: The abdominal scan revealed no metastasis, and Dr. W. says dad has “a long time.” Combined with the medical news, the news about having a new calf made it a great day for Dad.

Shortly before lunch time, we were ready to roll. On the way home, we passed a Victoria county sherif trolling for tickets. He was driving a dirty pickup truck with a tool box and a headache rack—not lights on the roof. Only the logo on the door identified him as a cop. Sneaky bear! I wonder if he has trouble getting people to pull over because of the lack of identification. These are paranoid times, but paranoia has survival value.

Dad was almost himself by the time we got back to the farm, and the calf was still with mama at the water trough—very shady and cool there. I went into Yorktown to get prescriptions filled while Dad napped and Chris got ready to drive to Tildon for work. As I was pulling into town, Chris called to let me know Dad has a second calf. There was a new white faced calf to go with the brindle calf we found yesterday.

Another new calf to brave the August sun

Back at the house, Dad was feeling good enough to go through several of his standard rants: business, lawyers, politicians, and the decline and fall of the US at the hands of greedy Republicans out to destroy the middle class. I let him rant. It is good to see him with that much energy.

He is stronger today, able to move around enough to take care of himself. He still doesn’t have much appetite, but he is eating about as much as before the procedure.

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 Quick Trip to See Dad

Dad thinks deep thoughts after a nap.
After the rains, the corn looks really good and stands more than six feet tall.
Many of the stalks have two ears. Some have three, but no more than two will make.
Roughnecks dismantle the rig in Betty Ann’s field.
The coastal is green and lush.
The recent rains helped the small patch of jigs take off. The grazer beside it is doing well, too.

While Suna did her thing, I went to visit Dad. He’s looking much better than he has for more than a year now, even though he celebrated his 89^th birthday this week.

When I got to the farm, he was out fixing fence. Yesterday a neighbor’s bull had wanted to come visit the cows enough to break four strands of barbed wire and challenge a mature Brahma bull. Dad chased the intruder out with the mule. After Dad ran into him a couple of times, he hit another stretch of fence at full bore,

Dad fixed that stretch of fence and another break yesterday. When he went outside this morning, something just didn’t look right with another stretch. Closer investigation revealed a gap there, too. Luckily, the Dad’s rented bull and his harem were laying under a shade tree looking at the gap and taking bets on how long it would take Dad to notice it and fix it.

After working up an appetite fixing fence, I took Dad into Yorktown for lunch. The local pizza parlor wasn’t too busy, so that’s where we settled. We ordered “The Monster,” which consists of everything they have to offer except jalapeños. Dad finished off two good-sized slices.

On the way back, we visited with the neighbor who bought Uncle Carol’s have of the old homestead. We talked about innocuous things and watched the roughnecks dismantle the drilling rig across the road on Betty Ann’s place. They’re moving it one piece at a time around the corner to another neighbor’s spread.

Soon it was nap time. Dad and I each dozed and then philosophized before wandering around the farm.

I sure am glad I still get to visit with him.

New Corn

The corn Dad planted just in time for the rains is popping out of the ground.

We went to visit Dad this weekend. Suna did a great job documenting much of the trip in the Ursula blog. So, I’ll just hit on a couple of the high points.

• Dad now has his doctor’s blessing to take himself off all his medications. He is completely done with his radiation, and no more chemo. Yay!
• Dad is getting his strength and appetite back. He basically (not quite) cleaned his plate at both Aunt Di’s and Don Bravo’s. (To be fair, I could’t clean my plate at DB’s.
• Between Dad, Chris, and the rain, the farm is looking better than I can remember seeing it. It is good to hear Dad talking about doing things for the future of the farm.

It Was My Birthday

Once Dad would have been on his feet, pacing around the fire. I’m just glad he’s feeling good enough to be out watching it. Photo by: Chris

This will be my third attempt to post a birthday blog. Blogger ate the first attempt for an improperly closed HTML—which X2 used to pronounce “hate mail”— tag. The Blogger editor used to a little more forgiving than that, but I guess they’ve made it so easy to use that it’s extremely destructive.

Other than disgruntlement with Blogger, this has been one of the best birthdays I can remember. Unfortunately, since it’s taken so many times to get this post done, I don’t remember all of the things I was going to list. Here are some of them:

• Quality time spent with loved ones
• Good health
• Word that Dad’s radiation is done with and he’s starting to get his health back
• Enough rain for burning the brush pile at the farm to be thinkable

Everything Is Kinda Alright

Dad at Christmas

Everything is kinda all right

We gonna make it through the long night

And everything’s gonna work out all right

Long as we keep a-movin’ on

—Charlie Daniels

I should have posted about this a while back, but I’ve never been that good at keeping up with my journals, even though I keep starting them.

I chose the title of this post from the Charlie Daniels song quoted above because that is how I feel after talking to Dad on the phone this evening. It’s not great, but some times all right is all you get…or need.

The picture of Dad is from our trip to see him at Christmas. This picture and many of the recent ones bring a different song to mind.

Well, to me he’s one of the heroes of this country

So why’s he all dress up like them old men?

—Guy Clark

That’s not how he sounded when we talked. And that’s not how I feel tonight.

Dad is now almost through with his radiation therapy. Because they’re irradiating the same general area as when he had colon cancer, he can only take half of what the radiologist said he would normally do for bladder cancer. Dad seems to be tolerating the therapy very well. Today was the first time he complained of any side effects, and those are not beyond the pale of his normal range of symptoms.

So, I’m reasonably optimistic. Dad is in good spirits and has some goals set. They aren’t as long-term as he once set, but they are very reasonable for someone pushing 89. I am very pleased that one of them is to reach 90. When he accomplishes that, he can set some more. As he noted today, “You have to have goals.”

On a completely different note, Suna and I had dinner tonight with Tubaboy and his girlfriend, who has a vaguely Princess Di-ish look to her. (She is a very sweet girl from Montana.) She used Tubaboy’s kitchen to prepare an eggplant primavera. I was really surprised at how delicious it was—not that I had any doubts about her culinary capabilities; it was the eggplant part that bothered me.

After dinner, we walked around campus and visited Tubaboy’s roommate at work. On the way home, I saw a huge gray fox run across the street. Now I know why the dogs have been in an uproar the past several nights.

Thanksgiving at the Farm

Here’s the reason we changed directions after two hours on the road. This is Dad's fun. It's also what keeps him alive. The field that burned is now one of the greenest parts of the farm. Tiny shoots, but green.

We went to see Dad for the Thanksgiving break. Full details are in the Ursula blog, so I just want to focus on how Dad is doing in this post.

We got to the farm at about 21:30—long after he had gone to bed on Wednesday night. By 09:30 on Thanksgiving morning, he was out in the fields. He took a couple of hours to rest mid day, and went back out to plow for several more hours. I estimated six hours in the tractor on Thanksgiving Day.

He worked even harder on Friday and finished his plowing on Saturday, just before the sky spit for a while but refused to settle the dust. So while he doesn’t have the stamina he did when he was a young man of say 70, he is doing great for someone who is pushing 89 and fighting cancer.

The only down news is that he seems to be trying to convoke himself that the doctor won’t be able to resume treatments on Monday. He says he may tell the doctor he doesn’t want to continue with the treatments.

On the other hand, he continues to set goals and work to see them accomplished. I’m hoping his pride and determination win out over his pessimism. To use his favorite phrase, “We’ll see.”

A Quick Update

Since I don’t have a picture of Dad’s face when he got the good news, here’s one of my brother Edwin, me, and Dad. I think it was taken sometime in the mid 1800’s.

The test results came back with good news. Dad’s cancer had grown, but it was only on the surface. Given that this is a very aggressive form of cancer, the doctor said its limited growth was a very good sign that the treatments are working. He went on to say that he thinks we can beat it if we increase the testaments to every week (which is what he originally said he wanted to do but never scheduled them more often that every two to three weeks).

…Home Again Hippity Hop

The first thing we did was rebuild the fence Chris knocked down while saving what he could of the hay crop. We also hung two new gates by the driveway so Dad can let the cows out to graze in the fields after harvest. Here’s the “Hippity hop” part of the title. Suna told Chris she wanted a picture of me This was the best we could do given the glare on the cab plexiglass.

Dad was feeling much better this morning, but he was still willing to listen to reason with regard to following the doctor’s orders. Instead of insisting on doing the work himself, he sent Chris and I out to hang gates and plant fence poles.

I drove the tractor while Chris did the brain work on the ground. He made sure the posts were aligned both along the fence and vertically. I would guide the front-end loader over the post and push it in the ground using the flat on the bottom of the pivot.

While planting the posts, we managed to scare up a bunny nest. I clipped one little guy’s left leg, but he seems unhurt otherwise. We took him back to the house for Dad to nurse back to health. He’s very friendly and seemingly unafraid of anything. Might be why they didn’t run from the tractor soon enough.

Later Chris found a pile of fur he thinks was their mom. She had been gone a week or so, which gives us hope that the little one we rescued and its siblings will survive OK.

By the time I had to head back to Austin, we had planted 61 posts and hung two gates. Dad was feeling “better than since before May” when he was originally diagnosed with cancer.

Home Again…

Moon rise and lens flare over the farm with a little hand-held jitter

Chris and I got to the hospital this morning about five minutes after the on-call doctor made his rounds and told Dad he was good to go home again. This was after the floor nurse last night told us the on-call never released patients on the weekend, and we would have to wait for Dad’s regular doctor to return on Monday. Luckily, they didn’t get the release paperwork ready until after they served him lunch, so we weren’t in trouble for making Dad wait.

Have I mentioned that he hates hospitals. He says, “If you say in a hospital long enough, they’ll kill you.” So there is nothing that would have made him madder than having to wait on someone to get him out of there.

We got him home, and he decided he wouldn’t push the doctor’s orders again. He laid down and slept most of the afternoon. We watched Lawrence Welk, and he went to bed. So did we. It’s been a long one.

Cancer and John Deere

Dad and Chris discuss farm things while we wait for Dad’s new John Deere to be delivered. This should have been our first indication of what kind of day we were in store for. The smoke the driver is pointing to was actually on the other side of Cuero—more than 20 miles away The driver carries the Slow-Moving-Vehicle placard to install on Dad’s new, larger tractor while Dad wanders over to kick the tires. Chris points out something about the tractor controls as Dad moves hay. Chris buries the last of the burning hay after the fire is contained. At lest the sunset was spectacular. Maybe it was just a new appreciation of the sunset. After a long, stressful day, Dad concedes we need to take him to the Emergency Room.

This date was supposed to be an auspicious one for weddings, movies, and other things. It certainly turned out to be eventful.

I got a call the day-before-yesterday that Dad’s cancer had returned. Chris had taken him in for some tests, and they were going to keep him over night. There was a lot of anxiety and gloom in the message. The doctor felt it safer to err on the side of pessimism. I told Suna and my boss that I would do what I needed to do to tide my work project (a conference call with Singapore and some paperwork) for a few days. Then I would head to Yorktown to hear from the doctor first-hand what was going on.

It turned out that I was at the office until after 21:00, so I didn’t head out until work-time yesterday. I got the hospital just after the doctor made his rounds and determined Dad could go home. The prognosis was still very pessimistic, but Dad was chomping at the bit to get home to his cows. So we headed that direction. We did get him to eat at Whataburger on the way. He slept most of the afternoon, and we all went to bed early.

The big deal for this morning was that Dad’s new tractor was being delivered. He was excited, despite being tired and complaining of problems with his catheter. Some minor adjustments, and he said everything was good. So we went outside to wait.

Dad couldn’t stop talking about the new tractor. He listed all of the features it had that the old one didn’t. He was especially proud that after using the old tractor for three years, the dealership offered him a thousand more in trade than he paid for it to begin with. When it arrived, a huge smile broke through the fatigue covering his face.

The driver unloaded the new tractor and got it set up while the salesman talked with Dad and Chris about a spreader Dad wanted. It had been laying in the yard for almost two years and had accumulated some sun damage, which resulted in some small breakage around the edge. Dad finally agreed to take it as-is for the price the salesman said he couldn’t reduce.

After they left, Dad was agitated that he couldn’t play with his new toy. Chris and I finally gave in. We decided that if he left it in turtle mode, it wouldn’t be any rougher than riding in a car. Dad climbed in to the cab. You could feel the joy radiating out of that tractor as he moved the eleven bales of hay that comprised the total output for the year. The drought hit hard, even though Yorktown has had more rain than the Hill Country.

After the hay was all lined up neatly along the fence, Dad wanted to hook up his disc so it would be ready when he was able to work the fields. That’s where the trouble began. The bold that forms the top pivot of the three-point connection was rusted solid. A spark from cutting that bolt loose set the grass under the implant alight. The fire spread quickly as dry grass fires are prone to do.

Neighbors were showing up to help within just a few minutes. The woman from across the road got Dad to sit in her pickup while Chris and I, soon to be joined by others, fought the fire as best we could until the fire department arrived. We may have had it mostly contained, but we would not have been able to hold without the massive amounts of water they could dump—much more than the puny water hose I was using.

All-in-all, we lost only a couple of acres of dry grass, but we lost half of the hay crop. We would have lost it all if Chris hadn’t driven the tractor through the fence and pushed the unburnt bales into the empty field across the driveway. Chris showed he could make the tractor dance while fighting the fire. The house was unharmed as were most of the implements. Two of the rubber wheels on the planter melted, as did the valve stem on a tire that must have been 20-years-old. Very little damage indeed considering the potential for disaster.

After Chris finished burying the last of the burning hay, we went inside and ate some pulled poke tacos for dinner. The meat came out of a plastic tub. The tortillas were store-bought, and the cheese was the lowest-price sliced variety at the store. It was delicious.

Then Dad said he thought we needed to go to the emergency room. His doctor was out, but the answering service said to have the ER nurse call his on-call when we got there. It turns out that the anti-clotting medicine they had prescribed for Dad causes the clots to become gummy, and one had plugged the catheter, causing Dad a lot of pain. They decided to keep him over night to make sure all of the clots were cleared out.

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.

Father′s Day

Packaging for The Vampire Tarot Photo source: Cult of Personality

Father’s Day is one of those quaint traditions that I never paid that much attention to. I know it was important to Dad, so I always make a point of calling him some time during the day. Other than that, it′s always been yet another way for Hallmark to make money. No biggie.

This year, Tubaboy and Beccano chipped in and bought me The Vampire Tarot. It’s really cool—well thought out and beautifully illustrated. I’ll try to do a more thorough review either here or on Tarot Obsession soon.

Other than that, yard work in the Texas sun. It wasn’t that bad. It still hasn’t hit a hundred degrees yet. And once it does, the grass won’t grow enough to worry about mowing that often.

The Trip Home

Dad reassures Suna that the AC in his tractor works.

As I mentioned yesterday, we stopped off at Dad’s on the way home. We couldn’t stay as long as I would have liked, but we got to see him and eat some ice cream at DQ.

My favorite part was when he showed off his new tractor to Suna. He gave her a really good tour of the cab. He even started it and let her pretend to drive.

Suna and Beccano enjoyed riding around on the Mule that Chris loaned him. That gave Dad and I a little chance to talk—mostly about nothing. And that is just fine.

This week, I’m grateful to be able to talk to Dad about nothing in particular.