Rant #2,461: Drinking Muddy Water

I honestly did not think I would be here typing out this Rant this morning.

Yesterday was not a good day.

My 88-year-old father did not look good on Wednesday, and he even looked worse on Thursday.

My 80-year-old mother told me that he was not responding to her when she asked him to do something, and he appeared to have no vim and vigor and no energy at all.

Finally yesterday afternoon, he was not responding to her at all, nor was he responding to me.

It is not like he was in a coma or anything like that, but he had no strength to do anything much but lay wherever he was.

My mother finally got him to his favorite chair, but when dinnertime came, he could not get up from the chair to go to the kitchen table.

He seemed to be out of it and completely lackadaisical, but after a number of minutes of pleading with him, he finally had enough energy to get to the kitchen table.

But in those ensuring minutes when he simply could not move, we called emergency, and as he was eating, they checked him out top to bottom and determined that he was not well, and he was put in a local hospital.

Even when he was eating he did not look right, and we all knew something was wrong with him.

So he was carted off to the hospital in an ambulance, and I took my mother to the hospital to be with him.

Due to the coronavirus protocol, my mother was the only person who could go up and be with him, so I was on the outside looking in for several hours, simply sitting at a picnic table the hospital had in the parking lot, waiting for word on him. My sister bought some food for us to eat, and after that, I was just on my phone, doing what I normally do: looking up jobs, doing on Facebook, etc.

There really wasn't much else I could do.

Several hours later, I took my mother home, and that is the last we heard about him until late last night, when my sister called me--she, her husband and two of her sons rushed to the hospital when they heard what was happening--and told me that he had pneumonia, and that he was being a handful for the doctors and nurses there, ripping out anything he was attached to and getting up from bed without any help or authorization.

After my sister told me this, I went to bed. It had been a very trying day.

This morning, after I got up--I didn't sleep too well--my mother told me that my father had been placed in a room, had a blood transfusion, and that my mother would be able to sit with him from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., the only visiting hours possible during the pandemic. Again, I cannot go see him, but at least my mother can.

First though, we have to bring him his hearing aids and eyeglasses, which my mother was instructed not leave at the hospital but to bring home, which she did. But she cannot stay when we deliver these things to security, so then I have to bring her home, going a few hours later to drop her off there.

And that is where we stand right now, slightly before 7 a.m. in the morning.

My father has had pneumonia at least two or three times before during the past few years. As one gets older, it gets worse, so this is nothing to toy with.

I hope he gets better really soon, because I believe he still has a lot of life to live.

But, of course, that is out of my hands.

So that is my story on the final day of July.

Wish my father luck.

He is going to need it.

Have a good weekend, and I hope to speak to you again on Monday.

If not, you will know why.