Tuesday, February 28, 2012

In about a month, Daddy will be 100.   About 18 of us will be here at once for the event/family reunion.  All my kids are coming and all my sisters' kids and some of our grand children.   I can't wait for the wonderful chaos.   I want to watch my kids and their cousins catch up with each other.  
Daddy's new bed is working beautifully.   He is eating and drinking and his latest wounds are healing.   We need to get him back to the dentist because the last dentist appointment, at which he lost two teeth, he was supposed to have all his teeth x-rayed and they did not do it.  

Also, I am searching for a tall person wheel chair or at least leg extensions.  He nearly slid out of his chair on his walk and that is how he got his most recent leg wounds.   The perils of being 99.
  
He does not know that his son died in December.   I have not made a permanent decision not to tell him.   I would want my children to tell me even if I had dementia.   His neighbor, who is also old, said don't tell him.  There is no urgency.   He won't remember anyway.  

His caregivers love him and try very hard.  My favorite time  with him is when I take my  turn at night duty and in the morning I poach him his eggs, too runny, just the way he used to make them for himself.   He goes "mmmmmmm" and digs right in.   I use a plate with a lip so that he can push his food up against it and get it onto the fork.   I avoid feeding him or helping him get the food onto the fork; the more he does for himself the better.  He is very coordinated with his fork, still, but if something falls off onto his chest, he cusses at it.

I am used to the cussing now from he who never uttered a single cuss word in all my days growing up.   Apparently he did cuss according to my mother.  But with the stroke in 2004 the part of his brain that restrains cussing in public got broken.  Thus he cusses often now and cannot control it.  It is so sad to see such a great mind, so chock full of encyclopedic information simply lose its ability to bring up any of it.  

People ask "Does he know you?"  He cannot say my name if I walk in.   I look different than I used to for one thing, short hair, glasses, extra weight.  But if I tell him I am your youngest daughter, he understands that I'm family and he responds in a certain way.   He likes me to mess with him  verbally and he recognizes HIS own humor.

One day the visiting nurse had a lot of poking and prodding to do, which he hates, so I stationed myself near his face and held his hand (not just to 'hold hands', but more to keep him from grabbing the nurse's hands and flailing around)  I talked to him like this:  "I need you to be strong and lie still, Daddy.  You taught me to be brave and  the nurse has to take a blood sample.   It won't take long if you lie still and be calm.   You are a man and I need you to show me how strong you are.....on and on I went saying these things, appealing to his manliness.   It worked to an extent, but at one point he yelled "BALONY!"   and we all laughed.  Even when he is suffering and fighting what the nurses have to do to him, he still cracks jokes.   This is my father.