Handel’s “Il Pastor Fido: Incidental Music” was playing on the radio station that my father found on the hospital tv last night. The sound was coming out of the tiny speaker in the telephone-sized hospital remote that was sitting on his bed. This device not only changes the channel it cranks the bed up and allows you to page the nurse. The music was just perfect. Dreamy and moving at the same time. My dad was sleeping but surely absorbing it on some level.
I took this photo last night. My brother in law, Howie, arranged to have Bob, my father’s regular barber, pay a house call to the hospital. We had been up there all day but my father was encouraging us to stick around so we could meet Bob. Bob refurbishes pool tables on the side and keeps some in his barber shop on Monroe Avenue. Bob knew “the Deacon,” the local pool legend, Irving Crane. “He’s got some great stories and some of them are true” is how my father introduced Bob.
Leo is beginning to let his engineering side go. The first few days up here were an onslaught of doctors and to make sense of it all my dad constructed a flow chart on his iPad so he could keep the players straight.
Above a solid line he drew ovals for the three doctors responsible for his health before he entered the hospital. Below that line he drew the team he thought was running the show here. The Palliative Care doctor, nurse practitioner and intern were placed in these spots. Their role has been so outsized that my dad put them above his so called “chief hospital doctor.” I gently corrected him and he scrubbed the names out, placed the head doctor up top and put the palliative team on the next tier along side the oncologist, physical therapist, occupational therapist and social worker.
The way it was explained to us this crew was to collect their data and report back to the head doctor who would then inform us of the game plan. The thing is, my dad had it right the first time. At some point the Palliative Care team were the only ones that mattered. the only sane ones.
3 Comments
You’re a great son. These are precious times. . Hold tight to them
Please send my love to your dad. He is a wonderful & remarkable man.
Paul, I really appreciate your documenting this time. In our materialist society the end of life time is intentionally hidden, though all of us face it. I went through this with my father, in hospice. It is a time we must acknowledge and learn from. M