Gary is in the inpatient unit for the hospice he is with. The inpatient unit is incredibly beautiful and save for exactly one nurse, all staff members have been wonderful. The nurse I am speaking of is medically exact but her approach leaves a lot to be desired. Not talkative and minimizes what the family is telling her. Now I have seen families who are hindering the care of the patient. We aren’t them. They set up a neb treatment, I take it off and turn off the machine. Needs to have new water or sprite? We do that. If they try to give him food we make sure everything is set up and take care of doing whatever he needs, which is sip of chicken broth, if he gets anything down.
Anyway, Gary is so frail. He fell about a month ago and didn’t break anything. I just can’t understand how, but he didn’t. Right along he has wanted to get out of the bed and go to the bathroom. Even got a bath one day! The walking to the bathroom was getting harder and harder. Night before last he was walking to the bathroom. I stand in front of him, he puts a hand on each of my shoulders and we walk carefully to the bathroom. My job is to hold on to his PCA and the medication bag. Once we are in the bathroom, my job is to continue holding the PCA and bag AND hold the back of his shirt back so he can see what he is doing. This time in particular, all things had been accomplished and it was time to go back to the bed. Queue the circus music and everyone gets ready to walk through the room. He puts his hands on my shoulders and we start walking. I know I am going to slow for him. Know how I know that? I’m glad you asked. He smacked my ass and said giddy-up! AND…queue that circus music again!
He woke up a little while later and Kristy was by the side of his bed where his drinks, dip and dip cup are setting. Everything needs to be just so. The sprite should be in one position, the dip cup in another location, dip ahead of the dip cup, water should be put a little further away from him. Kristy moves his sprite cup closer to him and he takes it and drinks some. Kristy is fussing with his table, and he goes to put the sprite down, then he moves it to another spot on the table, then another. All the while she is trying to take it back from him. At this point she looks up and he has the wicked gleam he gets when everyone realizes that he was just being an ass. He was being a fun ass.
Quick to say something rude or sarcastic has disappeared. As we go, the further his communication decreases to strictly necessary sentences and then just words. We were still getting little glimpses of the man, but today the communication is just mumbles where he likely isn’t talking to us. It’s the skeleton in the bed who looks worse than ever and skinner than we ever could have imagined. Meg, Kristy and I have shared some photos between each other. We delete them after. They are really meant for us to try to chase down some timing that won’t involve our decisions. No one needs to see any of that.
So, we eat together here and there. Check the next update for the hilarity of eating together.
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