Nightmare

I keep waking up with a recurring nightmare:  My mother is in constant uncontrolled pain with a broken back.  My father has Alzheimers.

My mother has been admitted to the hospital four times in the last two months, has been in an emergency room seven times, and in an ambulance six times.  In the midst of this, I’ve moved her to an assisted living facility, put her house up for sale, switched her doctors, and taken control of my dad’s care.  She’s been on pain medications since July 4th and isn’t quite sure where she is or how she got there.  Or who’s on her side.

My always-fastidious father is alone in bed for this first time in his 60-year married life, in a home that isn’t his, among dozens of caregivers who flit in and out of his little apartment like fireflies, speaking in accents he can’t comprehend.  He doesn’t know where his hearing aids are and the staff is in constant flux and don’t understand that he doesn’t hear anything but indecipherable noise without them.  He’s got macular degeneration and is legally blind.  He’s become totally incontinent in the last eight weeks and there’s a faeces stain on the carpet next to his bed.  He’s surrounded by dirty laundry — I’m paying this place a fortune but his laundry day is Thursday and his shower days are Wednesday and Friday.  (What Nurse Ratchet character decided that a 180-lb. six-foot-tall incontinent adult needs a shower two days a week?)

In May of last year, Mom read an article in the local newspaper about a heart surgeon who had discovered a minimally-invasive way of performing open heart surgery.  My parents met with this hot-dog surgeon and signed up for his services.  He told my Dad he’d have the bounce back in his step and feel like a 60-year-old man again.  Dad was 84-years-old at the time and three years in remission from surgery and chemotherapy for colon cancer.   Anyone who looked at him knew he was not a candidate for open heart surgery.  Dad is now less mobile than he ever was, suffering overall weakness, tremors, and anesthesia-induced dementia.  I’m not making this up:  that’s what it says on his 12-page cognition report.

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