Another Phase

Yesterday Daddy had another heart attack. We didn't know it was a heart attack - just that he had been severely delusional and when he was still that way this morning with no change in his thought process I knew that there had to be something wrong. I thought it would be some sort of infection or dehydration, but I just didn't pick up the clues.

The hospital left it to me to decide to admit him for monitoring or to send him home. I chose to bring him home. If he is going to have another attack soon and leave us, it is not going to be hooked up to a bunch of wires in a strange place with a bunch of strangers coming in every half hour or so to poke and prod and ask questions.

So he is home. The medication they gave him that was meant to sedate him only caused more delusions and excitability, but at least this afternoon they were happy delusions. When I walked into his room and said hello, he smiled at me with surprise and said, "Kori, they've turned you into a frog!" I asked if I was a green frog or a brown frog and he said I was green.

Now comes the hard part - we move into the next phase of his care when he can't get to the bathroom any longer and can't remember how to hold a fork to feed himself, or how to clean himself up. He doesn't notice that I am here - he has a number of imaginary people from his past that he is talking with and doesn't really seem to hear me. And now, as I write this, he thinks that he is in the hospital with his wife Micki before she died from cancer. When I tried to help my heart broke a little more when he said, "Micki's here. She's dead, but they've made her ok, we just need to get her home."

As long as I'm a green frog I guess I'm ok with it. I'll just have to get my prince to come home and kiss me so I turn back.