I've been sleeping in The Aunts' room the last couple nights, and we were greeted this morning with the news that - SURPRISE! - they were getting ready to wheel Dad in for his permanent pacemaker.
Which we had no idea was coming up so soon.
The man can barely keep his eyes open for more than a few minutes at a time.
* * *
There are three waiting rooms leading up to the ICU.
Well - technically, 2 waiting rooms and a tiny, almost airless consultation room, where they take people - with a chaplain - to tell them bad news.
That's where they took Mom - with a chaplain - to tell her about Dad.
That doesn't stop our family from camping out in the consultation room when the waiting rooms are crammed full of large, sobbing families that seem quite uncomfortable with our boisterous, prayerful, laughing family.
* * *
People handle the stress of a loved one's medical emergency differently.
Some mournfully await impending news, glowering at any nearby person who has the audacity to smile or laugh or be remotely cheerful in their proximity.
Some need a cadre of supporters surrounding them & reassuring them with much hugging and hand-holding that everything is going to be all right.
Some people need to be alone, and if that means spending the entire waiting time in a bathroom stall, that's where they'll wait.
Some people need to have one person to talk to in the midst of a noisy, disinterested crowd, discussing everything except what's going on.
Mom is the last type, with a sprinkling of the second.
I'd prefer to be locked in the bathroom stall, hyperventillating conveniently near a toilet, in case I also decide to be sick.
Instead, I sat tensely drinking a bucket of diet soda while Mom & Aunt Dottie talked Old Testament lineage ... I just wasn't in a frame of mind to contribute to a discussion about Methuselah.
Sue me.
I spent my waking moments the night before fearing that Dad would relapse in the middle of the night, and that would be the end.
I spent my precious few pre-surgery minutes memorizing Dad's face, kissing his forehead and telling him I love him.
I spent every second of his surgery remembering that the last time they attempted inserting a pacemaker, Dad wound up in a four-day coma - after being clinically dead for nearly 45 minutes.
So I gave up on Methuselah & the crowded cafeteria & headed back to the tiny, windowless consultation room - and promptly encountered the surgeon.
Done. Success. Beautiful. No complications. An hour later, they inserted a pic line (a semi-permanent IV port), and a half-hour after that, we were booted out for the dinnertime shift change.
Which was when they extubated Dad.
Which we hadn't planned on.
* * *
The sight of someone you love hooked up to any form of life support is horrifying, no matter how experienced you are in such situations.
You are never prepared to see a machine breathing for them, tubes carrying food to their stomach, tubes carrying away waste, wires measuring each rise & fall of their chest, a dozen IV bags hanging above their head.
It is shocking.
It stops you in your steps.
It is completely, absolutely surreal.
So I was elated - for 3 whole seconds - to walk into Dad's room tonight & see the absence of hoses stuffed down his throat.
He was breathing on his own.
It sounded (and looked) horrifying. He was not (quite) conscious. His left eye wouldn't completely close. He looked like a little boy who has aged 70 years in the span of a few days.
Nurse Ratchet immediately flew into me: "I DON’T want you guys hovering over him; I DON’T want you irritating him. I just got him calmed down. He always gets agitated when you guys are here, touching him & hovering over him. You're NOT all coming back here."
Did I mention that of several nurses I've taken an immediate disliking to (there are two I've loved), this one takes the cake? I wanted to punch her in the nuts, except she doesn't have any.
She's one of those nurses who doesn't want her job to be difficult, so if that means shooing the families out before the families - or the patients - are ready, that's what she'll do, anyone's sentiment be damned.
We visited Dad in shifts, and I spent my shift alternately sitting in a chair by Dad's bed, nearly sobbing - but not quite, lest I wake Dad and bring down the Wrath of the Wretch - and standing at his bed rail.
I did hover. I did touch. Deal with it, Your Bitterness. I wanted to feel my dad squeeze my hand - and he did. Matt came in a while later, and Dad's eyes opened wide. He looked terrified.
* * *
Since yesterday, Dad's been flailing his legs all over the place. No one knows yet whether it's his anxiety over the situation and his inability to communicate, or if it's reflexive because of oxygen deprivation.
Because of brain damage.
But whenever his horrid family is around, Dad admittedly gets agitated. And even his special-ordered-from-out-of-state bed is just too short. He violently thrashes against the footboard, banging his psoriasis-mangled feet and legs against it, throwing his legs off and back on the bed, twitching his feet back and forth.
It's scary to see. It's scarier when his eyes are open wide, and he can't talk for one reason or another.
Before tonight, it was because of the ventilator. Tonight ... who knows. He was able to tell the nurses his name after he was extubated - but that was it. I have no idea what else they asked him. I only know the one answer.
* * *
Matt came back in the midst of my hovering, and Dad opened his eyes.
Saw us.
Tried to say something.
All we heard was a grunting, wheezing "whuh, whuh, whuuhh," accompanied by a look that no human should ever have in their eyes. It was so terrifying and sad at the same time.
"Don’t try to talk, Daddy," I whispered. "You're doing so well. I'm so proud of you. I love you. Shh."
He calmed down a little bit, and I looked at Matt, tears running down my face.
My fear, beyond Dad not surviving this, is that he won't remember us - that we're strangers to him & he's scared of us.
Which was why I was sobbing in my brother's arms in a dark room in the Wyoming Medical Center ICU.
I am terrified to think that there is any moment of our lives - or any memory of any of us - that could be missing from his mind. It breaks my heart to think of vacations, weddings, anniversaries, moments of dinner-table hilarity just ... gone. Wiped out. Like a computer that can't be backed up.
We don’t know that this is the case. At all. But this is the fear that has taken root in my mind and grown like a weed in my over-active imagination.
It is the fear that followed me into that tiny consultation room and kept me bitter company while The Aunts left and Mom & Matt went back to visit Dad.
It is the fear that stopped me on the sidewalk outside our hotel room, bawling my head off & suddenly enveloped in a teary Case Huggle.
It is the fear that has me holed up in a tiny bathroom, typing this while The Aunts sleep.
Mom started crying again tonight. "I just want him back. I just want him to be able to go home with me."
Another huggle. More tears.
It's a good thing our hotel is strictly for patients and their families. No one thinks you're odd for crying all over the place or for looking completely stunned. Most of them are in similar territory. A community of the wounded living side-by-side in tiny rooms.
