July 18, 2014

In the last days of my dad's life he had to go to a lot of doctor's appointments and I took him to all of them.  On one trip to the doctor he divulged some personal information that to this day I  can not figure out why he thought I needed to know this, while driving to one of his appointments it was really quiet in the car and my dad said, "You know what?", and without thinking too much about it I said, "What?, and he said, "I am wearing a big ole diaper."  What do you say to that?  Did he need me to know this for some reason?  Why did I need to know that he had become incontinent?  In my entire life time, he never revealed anything personal to me.  Why that?  Soon after that he had to have a surgery on his neck, he was losing the ability to walk.  He barely made it through the surgery and he ended up in the ICU for a long time.  When he was being discharged we were given the option of taking him home or to put him in a home. He told us to never put him in a home so we honored that request. Upon discharge I was given instruction on how to take care of him.  How to give him shots for his diabetes, how to check his blood sugar, how to work the feeding machine that he was hooked up to and how to get him in and out of bed and lots of other things.  I was completely overwhelmed with crushing his medicine every day to put in his tube and checking his sugar and helping him out of bed and everything else that I had to do at home.  Why did I think that I could do this?  One time while I was transferring him out of his bed into his wheelchair and the transport sling tipped over and he ended up in the floor.  That was the hardest moment in my life.  I dropped my dad!  For the longest time I kicked myself over it.  Then one day after he had passed away, I was at a friends house telling her that story and I laughed until I cried.  The whole ordeal seemed hysterical when I explained it to someone else. Funny how that works.