I reached a point of frustration today, where I desperately wanted to throw something, punch something, scream till I'd lost my voice.
I settled for throwing my wadded-up paper towel as hard as I could into the trash can. Hardly satisfying.
Mom cried herself to sleep last night. The idea of caring for a grown man whose IQ and personal maintenance ability have been suddenly, unexpectedly and possibly irreversibly reduced is weighing on her.
Within the hospital, it's relatively easy to grab a case worker and ask who to talk to about these things. How and where to rehabilitate him, etc.
But once she gets him home .... it's on her. Bathing him. Feeding him. Making sure he doesn't hurt himself (or hurt her) or wander away.
It wrenches my heart to hear doctors and nurses talk about "anoxic brain damage" so flippantly - and in the same breath to talk about how he may never recover from it. At least not fully. They look, they diagnose, they prescribe and they leave.
My dad was competent, joking, being himself when he was climbing into the wheelchair for his surgery that Friday. Ninety minutes later, he was Code Blue on the operating table, going through 20 cycles of shocks, compressions & drugs.
Dead. For 45 minutes.
Mentally diminished. Possibly for the rest of his life.
I don't blame the surgeon. At all. I don’t want to come across that way. Dad needed a pacemaker. He would have died - within the week - without one.
But I cannot make peace with the possibility that this man who stares at ceilings and suddenly starts wailing is the man who used to talk history and politics and travel and auto maintenance with me for hours. The bed-ridden, IV-fed man who doesn't recognize me used to tug on my pigtails and call me "Mouse" and be the loudest-cheering dad at my volleyball games.
How do you come to terms with that? How do you re-introduce your parent to their life - & to yours?
The regret I feel for ever hanging up the phone with him or for ever thinking that anything else was more important than talking to my dad is a knot in my stomach that hurts so, so bad.
My heart just breaks.
And now, I'm sitting in a neutrally decorated waiting room down the hall from Dad and his 24-hour one-on-one CNA, wishing so desperately that my real dad would come walking down the hall & say it's time to go.
Or that I would wake up. None of my nightmares can compare to this.
