My Day So Far...

Well, it's Sunday. Things went fairly well from the time I rose until about 1230 this afternoon. I got up at 4:00 AM. Made some coffee for Dad, got his clothes ready and then headed to the bathroom for my morning S, S & S. For the uninitiated, that's 'Shit, Shower and Shave'. I believe it has a military derivation, but someone could correct me if I'm wrong. It was supposed to take a soldier in boot camp 10 minutes to do all those things. I took a bit more than 10 minutes. I am old and cranky. In the mornings it's worse than usual. I hope you understand that I have never been in boot camp. I think the sergeant would have killed me before I managed to graduate. Supposedly it only takes six weeks. I probably would have been dead in week three...

Anyhow, after I got myself processed, I herded Dad into the shower. He got cleaned up and into new undies. I wanted to get him a set of Spider-man underwear. I wonder if he would have noticed.  It would have been really great today at the hospital. (Bear with me. It gets better.) After that, we got his hair combed, then he sat down in his chair and we put his compression socks on. This is always a job. He has severe swelling in his right leg because of his afibrillation.  It's a heart condition where one's heart beat is out of time. Because of this, the movement of blood out of the lower extremities is poor and so is the movement of other fluids like water and so there is swelling. The compression socks help squeeze the fluids in the effected leg higher making it easier for the heart to move it on up the body to be filtered by the kidneys. The kidneys put out the waste water as urine, thus minimizing the swelling. More about that shortly.

After the socks were in place, the rest of ensemble was easy. One sweat suite consisting of black sweat pants and a whitish gray sweatshirt with white sneakers. This is truly the uniform of every well dressed senior citizen. He wears it well. He likes it. It's roomy and comfortable. Laundering is a dream. 

Dad then enjoys some more coffee and waits for time to depart. He is not patient about this. He wanted to leave for church at 6:00 AM. I convinced him to wait until at least 7:00 even though my Sunday school class does not begin until 8:00 AM. It takes 10 minutes max to get there from the house if you hit the light at University, so you do the math. He's still gonna be way early!

In the interim, I usually study the Sunday school lesson some more, since I'm the teacher of the class. I like to go over my notes one more time on Sunday morning so I sound like I know what I'm talking about. It's a charade I have been pulling off for 17 years. I have reason to believe I am 89% effective over the period with a five year average of 96%. So I am moderately successful at convincing my students that I know what I'm talking about.

Actually, I'm not sure about any of that. I think they show up simply because they like me. Ya,, I know, that's odd in itself...but it is what it is. They probably know I'm faking it (;^)

So anyway, after some study, I iron a shirt, look up some jokes for class, then I finish dressing and we go to church. Dad takes his car. I take mine truck. He likes to come straight home after. I like to hang around. I'm kind of social sometimes. It happens.

However...today after 8:00 class, instead of heading down to the auditorium for the service, Dad heads home. This has happened before. Normally it's because he has to pee or he doesn't feel good. I thought nothing of it. I stayed for church. After some socializing post service, I went home too. When I got there, Dad and the dog were outside. Apparently I had captured a racoon in my harmless trap. I have been trying to catch what ever was living under our deck. The racoon was suspect number three. I caught two opossums earlier in the week. I normally deliver my captured varmints to Yellow Banks county park. This is what I did with the racoon. I also picked up a book at home for my friend Karla and dropped it for her at church and then moved on to Yellow Banks with the caged racoon in the back of my truck. After an easy release, I returned home.

When I arrived, Dad informed me that he could not pee. It's already complicated because he has to catheterize himself, but now he is telling me that he cannot get the catheter in. I cannot imagine having to do that anyway, but when it does not work, it would be worse. I'm sure he felt like he was going to bust open. As I questioned him about it, he said he had not been able to pee since last night (Saturday). Wow.

So we went to the emergency room. After admittance, they did an ultrasound on his bladder. They detected 614 ml of urine, so he was about full. They catheterized him with some anesthetic lubricant and drained him. Some of the urine was sent to the lab. They left the catheter in place. While we waited, Dad produced another 600 ml of fluid.

When they finally came back with the results, they informed us he had a bladder infection, prescribed some antibiotics and sent us home. Dad had a catheter in and leg bag in place. I took Dad home and went to the pharmacy to get the prescription filled. When I got back, he was in the bathroom trying to remove all his equipment. He remembered nothing of the trip to the emergency room or why he was hooked up to the cath unit.

Since that time, he has tried to catheterize himself twice, only to discover that he already had a unit in place. Each time I have had to explain to him that the unit will be in place until the infection is cleared.

This interruption in his regular routine has completely confused him. I suppose I am going to be up all night giving intermittent explanations.

Let me say here and now, I do not think this is going to work. He does not understand or remember from one minute to the next what is going on with his urinary tract.

So...that's my day so far. How is yours?