Well it’s been a very hard couple of weeks. I am shattered tonight, and this is not going to be a long post. Basically, dad is in hospital, he’s in a critical condition and yesterday he nearly died. I’m not going to put too much of the detail of this on here – in one way I want to, because the devil is in the detail, and the detail is what keeps going round and round in my head, the horrible, visceral reality of illness – but in another way I don’t because it feels disrespectful to him. He’s stable now, on life support and heavily sedated – although the detail of what this means has been explained to me quite a few times and in various ways by different people, I’m still not really sure if he is in any way conscious or aware of what is happening around him.
I am not sure how I feel about this. Sad, yes – of course. And scared. Not particularly of death – I think that in a way death is the end of suffering, and the person who it happens to is finally released from pain. It’s pain that I’m scared of. I hope to god that he can’t feel anything and isn’t aware of what’s being done to him, all the tubes, and blah blah blah. We (as in me, my brother and my brother’s wife) arrived at the hospital yesterday in a panic, after a text from Kay (dad’s second wife), to find things in full on emergency mode, doctors and nurses in green coats milling around, doctors performing CPR. It was truly terrifying. All those machines, the ferociously bright lights, the beeping, the waveforms that may or may not mean something awful… we relatives stood to one side like idiotic spare parts, not part of this particular medical drama, the lights were not on us. I’m not even really sure that we should have been there, to be truthful – because those images are going to be very hard to erase from my brain now.
I went to see him today, and it was calm. Dad was peaceful – still critical, still on maximum dosages of most things, still being kept alive by drugs and machines (although they are reducing his oxygen a little) but peaceful. His eyes were closed, his face seemed more relaxed. No fierce lights or dispassionately efficient doctors. I talked to him a little, and felt happier. He’s a stubborn old fool, he has to make it. If anything, his sense of humour will bring him through. Or the thought that he’s missing out on chatting up all these good-looking nurses…
No phone calls, no texts today. This can only be a good thing, don’t they say? No news is good news. I hope. Is this because we only feel compelled to inform people of the bad things that happen and not the good? But it’s the waiting, and every time the phone rings my heart contracts painfully. This is not going to go away overnight, either. It’s going to be a long haul. He’s a very very sick man right now. But he will make it, I feel sure. He’s not going to let go that easily.
Did I mention what dad has? He has pneumonia, caused by COPD, caused by smoking, which he finally gave up in 2007. But it was too late by then. His dad, my granddad, also had emphysema, caused by smoking. And I, too, was a smoker. Heavy smoker, for a while. I gave up in 2009, when I became pregnant. But did I leave it too late too? I don’t even want to think about that right now.
