Reflections on a Sunset

We spent yesterday at Grandpa's house, cleaning and painting and preparing. The doctors wanted us to have a Plan in place last week, anticipating a possible release date of Friday. We're nowhere near ready, but we're making some headway against the decades of accumulated stuff.

The Plan has been that Grandpa would go home, but not be left alone, day or night. A rough schedule of who takes what shift is in the works. It won't necessarily be easy, but it's family, so it will happen. Somehow.

Grandpa had been doing better on Friday, according to my uncle. He ate most of his food. He was talkative. He even wanted to walk around before going to bed - an activity he hasn't volunteered to do for years. It looked like he'd bounced back again.

My aunt stopped by the house yesterday after visiting Grandpa. He slept through most of her visit - not a true and restful sleep, but an exhausted, lingering insensibility. Even when he opened his eyes, he wasn't there, foundered in his own fog.

He's also been having other setbacks. The pneumonia tried to return; apparently, it's caused by him being unable to swallow properly and inhaling bits of food or water. The rehab center was supposed to be giving him thickened liquid to help, but not every order at this place is necessarily carried out with due efficiency or follow-through (as we discovered during the catheter/renal shutdown incident.)

It's starting to look like he might not come home after all. The balance of good days, days when he could be at home with a little supervision, and his bad days, days when he needs specialized eyes and hands nearby constantly, seems to be tilting towards the latter. All of our preparations may be not to bring him home, but to make Grandpa's home sellable.

He's bounced back before, but as days stretch to weeks, as nearly a full month has elapsed, those bounces look shorter and smaller, a ball running out of energy to rebound as it settles slowly towards a standstill. He's 92 years old - eight years shy of a full century - but watching those years catch up, his life wear thin, down to this last threadbare stretch... it may be inevitable, but it's still unpleasant.

We drove home under one of the strangest sunsets we've seen in years. The slanting sun painted the world in bright golden light, while a flat blue-gray sky framed the scenery. It looked more like a sunrise. It was oddly beautiful, enough so that we pulled over on the way home twice to snap pictures, to try to capture the peculiarity of it before it vanished to a memory.

On camera, at least, sunsets - and people - can last.

The Bumblebee

Today, we went over to Grandpa's house to continue cleaning up spare rooms; if he comes home, he'll need live-in help of some sort, and if he doesn't come home the house needs cleaning anyway. When we got there, I saw a bumblebee of significant size - not the largest I'd seen, but decently big - lying on the windowsill next to a vase of silk tulips. Nobody had been in the house for a day; it must have come in then and, having failed to find nectar in the artificial flowers, succumbed after beating itself against the glass.

Not a great sign, given Grandpa's continued downward slide.

He hasn't eaten voluntarily in three days. He rocks with nausea and stomach pain. Yet the staff still declares he's eating well. They even asked him if he was fine; he said yes, as he often does to any question put to him, especially questions he doesn't want to answer. So he must be fine. Never mind that he's shaking with hypoglycemia, that he can barely swallow what food my uncle coaxes him to try. Never mind that everyone who sits near him at meals knows he's falling asleep in his food and hasn't eaten. Never mind that one glance can tell you he's sick.

The whole family is getting exceptionally hacked off by the way the staff keeps brushing us off. Something's clearly wrong. He probably needs to go back to the hospital. At the very least, he needs someone to pay attention. This is not the same man who was doing so well in therapy. This isn't even the same man who left the hospital to begin with. This is a sick man, maybe even a dying man.

We'd been cleaning for a few hours when I heard something buzzing in the living room window. It was a bumblebee of significant size. A look at the windowsill revealed that the immobile, seemingly dead bee was no longer there. It had sprung back to life, and was now doing its best to escape the flowerless confines of Grandpa's house. I helped it out the door, where it buzzed about angrily for a moment before taking off.

I can only hope Grandpa will be as lucky as that bumblebee...

TUESDAY UPDATE: Mom went to see Grandpa today. The other day, my uncle got in touch with a social worker who would see to it that Something Was Done, so she wanted to see if they were following through. She called from the rehab center a while ago. Grandpa's on his way back to the hospital proper for a urology problem. So, maybe they'll figure out what the heck's wrong with him and actually Do Something About It. (Seriously, one of the chief reasons we went with this rehab center was the fact that they had a hospital right below them if something went wrong... why did it take something this bad to make them actually take advantage of that proximity?)
UPDATE OF THE UPDATE: Grandpa's back in the rehab center after an excursion to the ER at the original hospital. (Turns out they don't have a urologist at the ER in the rehab building basement. I thought urology issues were pretty common problems, especially when you're dealing with older men, but whatever...) Anyway, they finally got a catheter in and drained him; it'll be a couple weeks before they can figure out if he'll need one permanently, or if there's any permanent kidney damage from the backup. Yes, this has been coming on for at least 24 hours, probably since he went off his food to begin with. Grandpa was apparently in so much pain he was crying last night - and this is a man who used to calmly sew up his own fingers if he cut them too deeply. Evidently the rehab staff was much more helpful today after complaints were made over their heads... guess you really do have to be the squeaky wheel, after all. So, it's been a long and stressful day, but it's over now. I hope.

Intermission with Moon

Just because it's been danged depressing around here lately...

Setbacks

When last I posted, Grandpa was doing pretty good in rehab.

On Monday, he started coming down with a bug.

Tuesday, he seemed worse; his mind was wandering between dream and reality, and he was coughing stuff up. But he still seemed decently upbeat overall.

On Wednesday, he complained to my uncle about an ache in his lung.

Fast-forward over Thursday, and Friday an X-ray showed fluid in his lung. Probably pneumonia. He's back to sleeping almost all day and showing no interest in food.

The rehab center he's in has an ER on the first floor, so he's in the right place. I'm hoping this is just a minor setback. So is the rest of the family.

Dang it...

SATURDAY UPDATE: The news continues to be Not Good. Apparently, the rehab center now claims that he's going to need 24/7 care regardless, and that further therapy probably won't help. This, after telling us all week how well he's been doing in therapy... Either they've decided that the lingering mental issues are insurmountable, or someone's been bald-face lying to us.
And the X-rays continue to show Not Good Things. Something about a mass, likely fluid, nearish the heart and lungs... They'll do another X-ray on Monday.
On the plus side, even though he still had to be coaxed into eating, he was evidently more lucid today.
I really wish we'd get a straight story out of these people, so we know what the heck is going on.