Mom emailed last night with an update to Dad\u2019s possible UTI. Although he seems to be doing a little better from the antibiotics, his blood work came back \u2018ominous\u2019 with some red flags for liver and kidney damage, as well as dehydration and diabetes.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s lost 30 pounds in less than 6 months. He often refuses to eat or drink because things \u2018taste like dirt\u2019. Mom can sometimes coax him into something sweet to drink to combat the dehydration, but of course this is not good for his diabetes. The doctor is disinclined to sedate Dad and put him on IVs for the dehydration, probably as a palliative care\/quality of life issue.<\/p>\n
Mom wasn\u2019t answering texts, so I called Middle, who was quick to mention Dad might bounce back now that he\u2019s feeling better, but thought that if I had anything I needed to say to him, I\u2019d better do it sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n
When Dad was in his right mind, dialysis was his hard no, line in the sand. And I guess the current blood tests suggest dialysis might be in his near future. Mom’s email was clear that he did not want to do that. Last night, I tried to google life expectancy if he refuses dialysis, but could only find predictions for people who quit dialysis, not those who never start.<\/p>\n
Mom talked a bit in her email about how, over the years, she and Dad had discussed all the possible eventualities. \u201cFor your dad, he was hoping kidneys went first as it is a relatively painless death. Again, I think it is possible that this is a false alarm and that things could stabilize. However, the test results were a jolt of reality, so I thought you needed to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s having him evaluated for hospice care. My mother, who wanted to do everything herself, is opening the floodgates.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not processing much in real time, but the thing that has come across the most clearly in the last couple of hours is how humbling this is. I have spent years feeling like I had a grip on how this would go down, that it would be a relief for it to happen, that I would be sad but not conflicted. And truthfully, pretty superior about how I understood life and death. He was never going to get better.<\/p>\n
Last night, I kept trying to tell myself I was so sad because I couldn\u2019t hope for Dad to stay or go, and not having hope for either was the piece gutting me.<\/p>\n
But the truth is, I plain don\u2019t want him to die. Even how he is now, and what his care has done to eviscerate our family, and how each moment with him is heartbreak, and how angry I am, and how resentful I am that Mom chose him over us, and how shitty everything turned out, I still don\u2019t want to lose what\u2019s left of him.<\/p>\n
I am so surprised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mom emailed last night with an update to Dad\u2019s possible UTI. Although he seems to be doing a little better from the antibiotics, his blood work came back \u2018ominous\u2019 with some red flags for liver and kidney damage, as well as dehydration and diabetes. He\u2019s lost 30 pounds in less than 6 months. He often …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7468"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7474,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7468\/revisions\/7474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}