Update on Dad 9-5-10

Greetings, All,

Today was the first time I haven't been able to talk to Dad since I first started calling him, but I have some information from my sister Martha, and I have a sonnet written by Lisa Craig's boyfriend Court for Dad's birthday.

Dad's had a rough week this last week, Martha says. Last Monday night, just after 10 p.m., the phone rang at Martha's house. It was Dad on the phone. Apparently he'd been agitated and saying he needed to call his daughter, and the staff at the care center hadn't been able to calm him, so they called Martha and gave Dad the phone. He said something to Martha about the hospital, and she wondered if maybe he thought she'd been in the hospital because her husband Dave and daughter Emily had visited Dad that day without Martha--who was trying to get some canning done.

It turned out, however, that Dad thought he was in the hospital and he wanted Martha to come take him home. She and Dave went down to the care center and spent an hour there with Dad.

Apparently he's had a mild case of pneumonia and had been on antibiotics--which may or may not relate to what happened. Martha says he talked and talked and talked--more than he's talked in months. Even when a worker came in to give him a breathing treatment where he had to wear a mask over his mouth and nose, he kept right on talking. I asked Martha if he was lucid, and she said he mostly was.

Martha and Dave explained to Dad that he was in a care facility where he'd been for nine months and that there was nobody to take care of him at home anymore. They got him back into his bed and left, and apparently just minutes after they left, he rolled out of bed--somehow not setting off the alarms they have on him. He got a goose-egg on his forehead that had some blood on it and a streak down from one eye.

Also, he didn't sleep at all that night or the next! The care facility can't give him medication without a doctor's orders, and although he has had an order saying he could have a sleeping pill as needed, he hasn't needed any sleeping pills, and the order had expired. The care facility was able to get a new order by Wednesday night, and he did sleep some that night.

I'm not sure when he started feeling the urge to urinate about every 10 minutes--it may have been on Wednesday. On Thursday, Martha had a meeting with the staff about Dad's care. She asked that they check his catheter, and they found build-up of some kind and some irritation. (They changed his catheter, and he's no longer feeling the urge to urinate.)

After the meeting, Martha stopped in to see Dad, but he was asleep, so she didn't wake him.

I didn't get to speak to Dad when I called the care facility tonight, because initially I didn't reach anybody, so I called Martha. After speaking with her, I phoned the care center again, but by then Dad was asleep--and having heard about his week, I didn't want to wake him either. The staff did tell me that he was doing better than he'd been. Martha says she'll call me tomorrow, and I'll certainly add a post to the blog if he continues to have problems in the next two weeks.

Now for a change of pace: John's daughter Lisa and her boyfriend Court had been to the Shakespearean Festival in southern Utah just before Dad's birthday, so being in an Elizabethan mood,  Court composed a sonnet for Dad for his  birthday. Here it is:

Birthday Sonnet

August 5^th, 2010

By Court Roper

For Marshall Craig

While I hate to seem that I am partial

Four score and 14 seems an august age,

And so with this I do proclaim thee, Marshall,

Advanced enough in years to be a sage.

It goes unsaid that we are glad to see you,

Indeed there is no place we'd rather be

Though from this place we fear we cannot free you

And take you to the beach to water-ski

It is not just I feel for your grand-daughter,

Or just the fact that you are 94,

But so we say to our beloved grandfather

Happy Birthday to you! And many more!

We hope this, in the manner of the Bard,

Will serve you for our loving birthday card.

As a postscript: I have been visiting my sister Christie Seppi in Pittsburgh for the Labor Day weekend, and she and I went to a production of Much Ado about Nothing in the park today. I was hoping to be able to tell Dad about. It is one of his wonderful legacies to his family that he has passed on to so many of us his love of Shakespeare.

Thanks for your love and interest in Dad, and thanks for letting me know you're reading.

 Alison