Sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction.
Frankly if I read this I would suspect that a 6 year old made it up but this was the last 10 days, the weekend, and then YESTERDAY.
9-11 RIP my dad. He was 96. He lived a very full life. Always had a good word and almost never complained. A couple of hours before he became unresponsive and died about a day later, he was greeting friends with a "Well, Hi man... how are you"? Then he would go back off to whatever he was looking at off in the ceiling. He suffered very little and was not sick for long. We miss him but rejoice in knowing where he is now, a life well lived, a race run to the fullest.
So, that set the tone for the last couple of weeks, out of town, I had to fulfill all his last wishes and it was my pleasure. I don't function well on little sleep and he fell sick on Monday. We didn't receive a call until 9:00 PM, yes, we were in bed with the lights out and I had taken something to help me sleep. My sister calls and says, "Are you coming"? I'm like what? His Ho****e nurse called about the same time. I told them I'd be there Tuesday. God is good, Dad was still lucid when I got there and I got to spend a few hours with him, he knew who I was. About 7:00 PM the nurse gave him some Ativan and that was the last of his suffering. Before that for just a few hours he had been having muscle spasms in his arms and upper body. He would stretch, grab, and say, "OH MAN". (I never noticed but I say the same thing all the time). We got through that and (I apologize if I offend anyone or violate the TOS, it is not my intent) The Lord, IMO, was good to us. I went down on Tuesday and my daughter who lives in Germany had a prescheduled trip here planned. She arrived and her, my wife, and my older daughter drove down. They got there before he passed.
He died at 12:45 on 9/11/2014
He didn't want to be embalmed so we had a graveside service on the next afternoon with a flag to honor his WW II service. He was the town's oldest living veteran.
We came back home and had a little time but a slow recovery... then Friday I started to see spots, small circles with a black dot in the middle. It looked like a small shotgun pattern in my upper right vision. In a couple of hours it was 3D and covered my whold field of vision. I finally realized it was just my right eye. Then I started to see strands, like black hairs or spider webs, more and more of them. Then I started to see a semi-circle of lightening white light around the right of my vision if I looked hard to the right or up and down.
I went to the ER on Saturday AM, they told me it was not a stroke but to go straight to Kennestone hospital in Marietta if I lost and vision or if it got markedly worse. They made my an appointment with a ophthalmologist for ASAP on Monday. I went, she saw 5 hemorrhages around my retina but she felt I should see a specialist. I went to Kennestone and saw a doctor who taught this sort of thing at Columbia. He pressed and poked and looked and said I had a torn retina at about 3:00, in my right eye.
While we were there we got a call from our other daughter, the older one. She was in the ER back home. Said she coud not feel her arms or her legs. Our younger daughter had her return flight to Germany scheduled for later in the afternoon. I usually take her but she booked a shuttle, however she stayed with her sister and our son-in-law at the ER.
So, I got laser surgery to seal the tear in my retina. Let me tell you, having swirling, 3D, stringy black floaters (a ton of them) is NO FUN. It made me a little nauseous at first. OH... I forgot, I went to sleep Sunday night with a fever. It was low and only lasted that night, just another brick in the wall.
After we got out, I had not been able to eat all day so we made a quick stop at Panda Express.
Then my wife got a call from our "internal medicine" physician, Dr. Smith. She had a recent physical with labs. Dr. Smith noticed an enlarged thyroid so he sent her for an MRI or CT scan. They got the results but he would not give them to her on the phone... so instead of worry all night we went over to be "fit in". In the mean time Erin, my older daughter was released from the ER, she had really low potassium levels. They are scheduling labs and gave her a scrip for super potassium. We gave her some gel caps we had... OH.. before that, my son-in-law volunteered t drive my younger daughter Becky, to the airport. Something I usually do and staying with her sister she had missed the shuttle. It was the start of rush hour. She misread her ticket and arrived late but not too late, HOWEVER, the plane left 35 minutes early... she said she just stood there and cried. They changed her to today at no charge. In the meantime, PJ, my SIL, had driven back into the Atlanta rush hour traffic. Erin called him, to ask him to turn around and go back and get her. It took her about 10 minutes to convince him she was not kidding. He is a good sport. He turned around, went back to the ATL airport and picked her up. He was fine with it, told her it was not worth being upset about and did his "giggle". He spent 5 hours in traffic taking her to and from the airport, we live about 39 miles from it.
We went to see Dr. Smith. Erin came over when she was released and I went to pick up out eldest grand daughter who was at that point scared because phones were dead or in cars. Dr. Smith told my wife, Cindy, that she had a small nodule in her thyroid and they could wait 6 mos and see if it grows or do a biopsy, of course we are doing the biopsy, next Tuesday.
I got my grand daughter 9the eldest) Cindy and Erin picked up Rebecca the younger and we all made it to our house to wait for PJ and Becky to get back... when I went to get Hurley, my grand daughter, I was below empty but thankfully I did not run out of gas.
We all finally got there and ordered Chinese delivery. We had a really good family dinner and I got up this morning, floaters and all, and took Becky to lunch, took Erin lunch at her work, went to see mom (Cindy), and then got Becky to the airport two hours early, LOL.
OH.. in the middle of all this we got a call from my neice who is sitting with my mom, she is 97, saying that there was a huge pine tree about ready to fal on my parents house. We told her, "we just cannot do this today". I called this morning first thing to my brother-in-law who "cruises timber", he picks out the trees to be cut when people want to sell timber off their land. I called him to ask for a referral for a "treeman". He told me who to call. I set up for him to go out then we got another message from the neice saying that she was moving furniture from the end of the house where the tree was. I was like, WHAT?? No one told me it was an emergency! Arrrrgh. I called the treeman back and told him what she said. He said he would go right away. He did. He called and said that they had a 75 ft (21.3 meters) bucket truck and the tree was 25 ft ( 7.6 meters) taller than the bucket and when he started to cut the tree it began to fall apart, but they got it down and cleaned up and half the price of other people who had loked at it. I was thinking that it was to prevent a future problem, whew... we dodged a bullet there I think!
So yesterday was one of the craziest days I have ever been through but it ended really well with a nice family dinner, the younger grand daughter spending the night with her Aunt Becky (they are both Rebecca, my daughter is my grand daughter's namesake).
I'm OK with my dad passing he was ready, it was time. Something I almost forgot. He had a catheter for the best part of the last year and he got a few UTIs. If he got really sik with one he would always see his older (deceased) brother, Royce, They were close. Dad and Royce built homes next door to each other in the 1950s and there they lived, close. Last spring dad had a bad UTI and he was holding my hand in the hospital and thought I was Royce. He was seeing Royce a few days before he died. I didn't find out until after he died but.. he died on Royce's birthday. You can take from it what you will, I take comfort from it..
Dad was buried with his 11th Airborne hat and they slipped some "button flowers" my grandkids made and notes from my sister's kids into his hands.
It was the passing of an era for me and a REALLY weird day yesterday... but today is anew day!
It is my wife, me, and the cat again. Every time I think about complaining I remember that I have read the book of Job a few times and I remember his words, "The Lord gives and The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of The Lord".
It has been a hard and strange month BUT... Everything is back to norbal now!
Thanks for listening, I hope your life has been status quo!
EDIT> Instead of replying to this thread. I am just editing in a "thanks". I think this thread should just slide on off the front page.
Julien
post edited by jbow - 2014/09/24 10:46:48