Return of the King

My dad gets to come home for a few hours on Sunday! For those just joining us, after starting the year off in the hospital with a bad shoulder infection, he ended up in a nursing home with a “sentence” of 2 to 6 weeks of intravenous antibiotics and therapy. We've learned that insurance will only cover something like 21 days, so hopefully the medicine will have had enough time to do what it has to do by then. His fever has stabilized, the swelling in his arm and hand have gone down greatly, and he's been a lot more like his old self, despite the depressing surroundings. With my mom's 70th birthday coming up on Monday, he really wanted to be free to take her out to dinner. And since the nursing home allows people to sign out for a few hours if their condition allows it, he'll be getting his wish.

There's been a lot of snow and ice lately, and I've done the best I could to manage it between going to work and visiting my dad. One advantage of the nursing home is that it forces him to recuperate and take it easy, as much as it drives him crazy to sit there. “I don't think it's working; is it dripping? It should be dripping faster.” God help us all when he figures out how to speed up his own IV. But his impatience is a good sign, and a lot more like the man who raised me than the guy who was talking about being “worn out” and “finished” a few weeks ago. If he was home, he wouldn't be able to sit idle while there was still ice in the driveway or Christmas ornaments up around the house. I've done a little bit at a time, and Saturday morning got the driveway completely clear so he'll come home to asphalt. The weather warmed up briefly just when I needed it to.

The home isn't all that depressing, though it is sad to see the condition some people are in. An old man drooling in a wheelchair in the hallway turned out to be our old mailman. We all spoke to him for a few minutes, though he didn't recognize who we were right away. Even when he said we looked familiar and then that he remembered us, I'm not entirely sure he did. For some reason he thought my name was “Christopher”, which we all know it is not. There's another guy who always says hello when he's sitting out in the hall. I returned his greeting, and now can't walk past his room without hearing “HEY BUDDY! HEY! HEY BUDDY!” I think John Dorian once had a similar situation with one of his patients. I've never seen any family visit the guy either, which is kind of sad. He did have a visit from my overly friendly godfather the other day, who wandered in to the guy's room to chat while a nurse needed more space to work on my dad.

My dad's roommate is an interesting case as well, an old Italian guy who feels he can eat anything he wants after multiple bypass operations. He shared a giant mozzarella sandwich with my mom the other day that his family had brought him, and on Saturday he just wandered out because he was sick of the food there. Eight hours later when he still hadn't returned, we asked one of the nurses who told us the guy owned his own restaurant, and was always coming and going. So there's definitely a wide range in attitude, capability, and freedom among the population.

It will be nice to have my dad home. He hasn't set foot in his own house since January 5th; in 78 years I don't think he ever went on a vacation that lasted more than three days. The cats will certainly be curious and sniffing the ankles of the familiar “newcomer”. The hard thing will be bringing him back, but since he has a stent installed in his arm that will eventually have to be removed, he knows he's not quite done with the doctors. The tough thing too with any infection is explaining to a person that, although he or she might be feeling better, it's important to finish any prescribed course of antibiotics to eradicate the bacteria completely. The evil little bastards might not be gone completely, only weak, and might come back with a vengeance if given an opening.

This is only halftime in the big game, not a true return, but a welcome prelude to that day and a sign that the battle is closer to being won.