Sitting in a hospital room on the fifth floor of St. Dominic offers a view, and a listen, of Lakeland Drive and I-55 in Jackson, and the Medevac helicopter landing pad down below. Sirens, hot rods, and helicopters all right outside the window. Interesting.
My dad was in St. Dominics last week after falling ill at home in Newton on his 91st birthday. I took him to meet my older brother, Gary, last Tuesday in Morton and he transported him to the Emergency Room at St. D’s on the advice of the doctor at the Newton Clinic.
The diagnosis ended up being a stone blocking one of his kidneys resulting in a nasty infection. In a little over a week, he had gone from pretty healthy for a 91-year-old to pretty darn sick for any age. Unhappy too. Hospitals may make people happy when they are able to fix what ails them, but patients become unhappy very quickly when they think they have had enough of it and are ready to go home. Needless to say, he was quite mad and very unhappy.
He is accustomed to having his way and doctors and nurses — rightfully so — don’t see it that way. They see it their way...as they should.
Anyway a stint was inserted into the kidney to allow full flow and IV antibiotics were plugged into a vein to help clear it all up.
Thanks to my brothers, Gary, and my younger brother, Richard, who drove in from Chattanooga, I was able to continue working while they pulled hospital duty most of the week. I took over Sunday and Sunday night and I really appreciated the two of them then, if you know what I mean!!!
The procedure was successful and he was released the first of this week. Unfortunately, like I said, the illness moved quickly and by the time we were done in Jackson the doctors determined he needed to spend some time in swing bed.
At this writing he is under the excellent care of Sydney Sawyer and the fine staff of Lackey Memorial Hospital here in Forest. How lucky my family is to have been able to get him in Lackey with no problem. We all certainly appreciate the Lackey team.
Dad is scheduled to remain in swing bed for two or three weeks, maybe longer if that is what it takes to get him back on his feet and back to his good senses. Time will tell.
As a part of this deal, my wife, Danny, and I now have two more dogs at our house, one little yappy white one and a chunk of a big fat red one — Dad’s dogs! His best buddies!
The little white one, Pepi, is about the same age as Dad, in dog years, and could use a set of dentures, so her food has to be just right or she won’t eat it. I’m sure it isn’t as just right as it is when Dad serves it but I think she’ll learn to make do if she plans on sitting in Danny’s lap with our two little Chihuahuas. That’s going to be full lap, I think.
The red one, Dollie, someone dropped over the fence in Dad’s back yard when she was just a puppy. She’s a thick mix of several breeds and a short, stocky thing that tips the scales pretty good. She can be a picky eater too, so I’m sure her food won’t be up to Dad’s standards either, but she, too, will learn to make do.
Dad and his dogs have lived at our childhood home alone since my mother died unexpectedly in 2019. He has a personal aid that does light cleaning, so he hasn’t been totally alone, and he still drove some until this illness took hold of him. Basically he has done pretty well for the last four-and-half-years — including COVID isolation — and Danny goes over weekly to do his grocery shopping and pick up anything else he might need. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that there haven’t been more problems before now.
All this just goes to show you that things can change really quickly, especially when there is a elderly person in the mix. Hopefully things will go as planned and Dad will be able to return home at some point, even if it requires a sitting service helping my brothers and me, and Danny, check on him.
He won’t be any more happy with that than he was with the doctors and nurses at St. D’s, but sometimes, like with his pups, we have to learn to make do. We have to make the best out of the cards we are dealt and try to do our best to make things work.
To use Dad’s words, it is what it is!
