Yeah.

My father was awake and alert enough to make his own decision about surgery today. His decision: no surgery, no life support, no resuscitation. Palliative care only. ( Read more... )

Dogwood on the banks of the Black Warrior River, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

I'm just going to jump right in here. I usually start here with a title, or at least a title in mind. Not tonight. Everything's all over the place.

OK well there's my title!

Warning: There is some gross hospital talk below. Consider yourself warned!
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My father (front) and his older brother in some traditional garb, around 1938 or so.
Click this photo to see a few more vintage family shots.

The days seem to be flying by. Has it been a week since I last updated? It's Wednesday and I'm home until Saturday, then it's back to Atlanta for the weekend, maybe through Monday. Things continue to rock along OK for my father. We had our big "family m33ting" at the hospital, and it was really helpful. We are still having to fight incredibly stupid battles (still with the bladd3r!) but despite all the big and small things that are just screwed up, my father is slowly improving. ( Read more... )

The new place, a little hospital with an acute care floor about a mile from the big hospital.

That sounds like the title for a great country song, doesn't it? My mother and I were talking one day last week about what car we'd want if we could have any one we wanted. I was shocked at my mother's insistence that she would want a Hummer. "But they're so high up and hard to get into, aren't they?" I inquired. "You can get a step that lifts you right up. I saw it on TV." Hee! If I ever win the lottery, Mama's gettin her Hummer!

So it's been quite the week. I stayed over in Atlanta until Monday morning, when I could hit the ground running at my dad's new hospital unit and see to a few things before leaving town. I don't like the system this place uses for coordinating patient care. The medical practice which operates the unit is chock-full of experienced experts in various aspects of critical care, but rather than having patients assigned to particular doctors, they rotate by the week, with one doctor seeing to all the patients in the unit that week. There is so little communication of basic information from one to the next that I am worried my father will be dead and gone before they finish reading his chart from week to week. Well that's a joke, really. His chart is HUGE and it's quite evident that nobody reads much further than the top few pages before diving in.( Read more... )

I love that photo of our friend T giving Beau some lovin. Poor Beau was deprived during my absence, I'm sure.( Read more... )

Rough day yesterday for my dad. He was put back on the ventilator yesterday afternoon. We had been watching him struggle, the "numbers" blipping here and diving there for the last day or two. It's hard to sit still, to swallow the panic when the blood pressure reading on the monitor drops to 65/38. Adrenaline starts to pump in the staff. Lights on. The pace around here quickens. Things happen. Things adjust back to "normal." Thank God for the people who live for this. ( Read more... )

I finally got my act together and brought a pile of goodies in here for the ICU staff tonight. The original plan was for my dad to be moved from ICU by tomorrow, and for this to be a sort of celebratory goodbye thankyou kind of thing. But that's not going to happen this week. When we found this out, though, the baking train had already left the station, so baked goods were baked, and packaged, and brought in. The reactions have been fun. My favorite: one of the techs came and stood in the doorway to my dad's room with her hand over her mouth, trying to start talking, but unable to because her mouth was so full. She kept waving her hand and looking like she was about to start talking, but all that came out was, "Mmmm! Mmmmm!" She totally cracked me up!( Read more... )

I hereby officially give up on the cheesecake baking method that begins with ten minutes at 475, then one hour at 200, then one hour in the shut-off oven. I have tried this twice, because it's reputed to totally avoid cracks in the top of the cheesecake. However, for me, it results in a distinctly scorched cheesecake. Every. Damned. Time. So that's ovah.( Read more... )

Home away from home (hospital parking lot)

So sorry to leave you hanging there. My father survived the surgery on Thursday, and has been recovering really well since. It's amazing, really. I am eager to hear his take on the whole experience. I think! ( Read more... )

The order right before mine this afternoon at Starbucks. Amazingly, a single barrista prepared all twelve of those lattes so quickly that I had virtually no wait for mine.

I'm idling away a bit of time in the ICU waiting room while my father undergoes some procedure or another behind the curtain. When it's closed, I let the unit secretary know that I'll be back in the waiting room, should the doctor be there behind the magic curtain. There is a part of this that is all about waiting for the doctor. Each one covers a different thing, and they each have their own agendas related to their own things. It's been fascinating to observe how often their agendas conflict, and how these conflicts are resolved. Often, the result is a herky-jerky ride for my father. ( Read more... )

The view from here.

Well when it comes to the human body, the human spirit, and medical science, you just never know. Where things were looking so bleak, now they are looking brighter. My father has come around enough from all the sedation and trauma that his personality is becoming evident again - he smiles, gets grumpy. He's still on the ventilator, but is actually ready to be weaned. They are only postponing that step because he has two more surgeries in his future - the first of these tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning. His health status overall is better than it's been since he first started this adventure.( Read more... )

Things remain bleak here. It's hard to say anything without everything spewing out. My father is still on life support, and he's not doing much better. Today, the doctors were slightly more encouraging. One time, one of them said, "When he gets out of here..." and that was sweet music to my ears when all we've heard for this week in ICU is "prepare yourself..." Even a tiny bit of hope is nice. For today, I'll take it.( Read more... )

No doubt, Lambo has been a blessing in the context of what we're dealing with here. News on my dad this morning is just bad, bad, bad. I'll know better when I'm back there myself tonight. I may pick up one of my brothers who can't get there himself and take him to visit dad, then drive him back home after. Mom's not sure he'll make it until Tuesday when Bro had planned to come...

In the meantime, we took Lambo to his new home in the country this morning. Pictures on Flickr, video soon to come, as time allows.

Just got off the phone with a reporter. Local folks - film at 5, 6 and 11.

I'm on the road again, back to Atlanta.

Not much time to write, but I can't resist. I can sort of sum the day's events up by relating the two biggest decisions I was called upon to make today:

1) Do I consent to putting my father on dialysis?
2) How do we decide who gets Lamb0?
( Read more... )

So we were sitting down in front of the television tonight, eating the grilled cheese sandwiches I'd made after my first dinner attempt went up in smoke. DreamGuy had the TV on CNN or something with Ron Paul blathering away. I grabbed the remote and switched to a station showing old Andy Griffith shows. Ahhh. Much more relaxing and enjoyable to me. The episode of Andy Griffith was the one where a goat got loose and they thought it ate some dynamite. Edited to add: The episode was called "The Loaded Goat." The whole episode is online here.

During the commercial, I kept hearing this bleating sound. I got DreamGuy to mute the TV so we could listen. It was the strangest sound. Maybe it was a crow injured in the yard? Some other critter? We went out to investigate. And like me, you are not going to believe what we found outside our fence in the back yard.


Meet Rambo, or as I call him, Lambo!
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I'm all turned around with the weeks all broken up by holidays. I had to stop and think - is today Friday? Or Saturday?

I've been a busy little bee. I didn't mean to miss another day updating, but I got all sucked into all kinds of little projects around here, and just didn't get back to the computer. Truth be told, I figure I've met my Holidailies quota by having posted 20 entries during December, which is the informal benchmark they give on the Holidailies site. Anyway! One of today's projects was to do another baked brie for a party this evening. I went the extra couple of steps and did those little leaves around the sides. I was quite impressed, but I think I was the only one. I'm not much of an artist, so the fact that I could make a piece of pastry look like a little leaf was quite the accomplishment for me. ( Read more... )

Dig my new lime green robe with hot pink monogram!
It matches the box holding my new TomTom. Whee!

It's been a super nice Christmas around here today. I was up most of the night dealing with the turkey, changing the water every half hour or so to "speed-thaw" it. I put it into the oven around six. It came out around ten, and while I was dealing with the drippings to make the gravy, DreamGuy took the masher to the potatoes which were reheating on the stove. Once I had the gravy finished, I took over on the potatoes. They still needed a good bit of mashing, and I decided my new stand mixer ( a gift from the generous DreamFolks) would be the way to finish the job.( Read more... )

DreamDad's got a gun....
Of course, the gun is NOT loaded!

It's been another lovely day. We crashed last night after our whirlwind weekend, and while DreamGuy went off this morning to enjoy a busy day at his shop, I stayed home and...did a whole lot of nothing. I had gotten all confused about our gathering plans with DreamGuy's family, thinking we were having our big dinner this evening. DreamMom told me that we were just opening gifts and having a light meal tonight, with the big meal on Christmas Day.

As we talked this out on the phone, I found myself feeling incredibly cranky, and I started talking kind of stupid. You know, stupider than usual. It's hard to describe, but what actually happened was I got all obsessed during the conversation about what I thought the plan was, and the various differences between that, and what the plan actually was. I kept going back over it and over it. "OK well I thought we were having dinner tonight. OK so I don't need to do the potatoes and gravy until tomorrow? OK well I was just washing the potatoes because I thought it was tonight. So we don't need the potatoes tonight?" I know it had to have been incredibly irritating to poor DreamMom. I didn't quite understand it myself. Until I hung up the phone and stood up, and my knees went all wobbly. Blood sugar: 55. Yeah. ( Read more... )

Crack factory!

Alright, well that's done. Whew! I was so tired when I got home earlier this evening, I wanted to just crash. I did nod off for a few with the dogs on the sofa, but as DreamGuy was going to bed, I got up another head of steam, and got my holiday baking pretty much done. It's not like I had much choice. If I wanted to take baked stuff to people in Atlanta, it was now or never. So I did, gosh I am not sure, about eight batches of Christmas Crack (posted the recipe 2 days ago as "Home Made Heath Bar Candy"), and three batches of candied pecans. Tomorrow morning, I will finish packing it all up into gift tins and bags, and it'll be ready to go. Some is going to folks here, and some will come to Atlanta. The house smells delicious!( Read more... )