November 15, 2015. Dad had a restless night, waking up a few times during the night. At 8:45 A.M., he was ready to get up. Before Gale helped him transfer from the bed to the wheelchair, I administered his morning meds and trach care. Gale had done a great job of taking care of Dad while I was in Houston, but she was glad to have me back in Temple to resume the trach care. After I left the room, Dad wheeled himself into the bathroom and proceeded to shave and wash up. He seemed to have an upset stomach and didn’t get out of his room and into the kitchen to visit with us until 10:00 A.M.

As Mom and I were driving to church, I told her that I had read the log book that the aides kept about Dad, so I knew about Dad’s fall yesterday. I was pretty irritated that she had decided to withhold this information from me. I was very invested in his care and recovery, and it disturbed me that my parents would choose to keep this information from me. She agreed that they would not withhold this type of information from me again and said that she would talk with Dad after lunch. However, we both hoped that there would be no next time.

While we were at church, Dad told Gale that he was tired and that he wanted to lie down. He also complained about some tightness and soreness in his back. Gale thought that he also seemed a little depressed about yesterday’s fall in the bedroom. The home-patient hospital beds had only two side rails, which did nothing to keep Dad in bed. At one point, I had used pipe cleaners to attach a couple dozen little bells to four chairs that we pushed up against the sides of Dad’s bed. He still might have been able to escape from the bed, but we hoped that the bells would wake at least one of us during an attempted escape. The chairs and bells had worked for about a week but were less effective as Dad got stronger. One side of the bed was partially obstructed because of the oxygen concentrator and nebulizer. While Dad napped, Gale moved the wheelchair to the other side of the bed and locked it in place, which made that bad boy practically impossible to move.

After Mom and I returned home from church, Gale told us that Dad had diarrhea. According to her, it had started last night and had become progressively worse during the day. I decided to call the Home Care office and request a visit from the on-call nurse.

After lunch, Dad read the newspaper in his room and rested until the nurse arrived at 4:20 P.M. She said that Dad’s vitals were great and said that he didn’t have a fever. When she learned about the fall (During every visit, providers ask if you’ve had any falls.) and the difficulty that Gale and Mom had had getting him up off of the floor, she said that we could always call for a nurse for assistance. Regarding the reasons why we had called for a nurse, she could only speculate about the cause of his diarrhea and back pain.

Now that the fall was common knowledge, Mom and I spoke with Dad for a few minutes, and I implored him to ask for help when he needed to get up. He restated that he didn’t want to be a bother, and I told him that we had hired someone whose sole purpose was to be bothered by him. He agreed to ask for help going forward.

He seemed to feel a bit better and joined us for happy hour.

Mom was the big winner at cards this evening. It had been a long day, and we were all tired. We started our nighttime routine at 7:45 P.M. and by 8:30 P.M. we were all in bed.

November 16. Dad had a tough night, starting at 1:00 A.M. This bout of diarrhea had a firm grip on him that was becoming progressively worse. He eventually got out of bed and ready for the day around 8:00 A.M. Gale was able to convince him to exercise with the core weight, but by 10:00 A.M., he wanted to return to his room to lie down.

Shortly after noon, Tracy, the nurse, stopped by for Dad’s routine Monday checkup. Similar to yesterday, Dad’s vitals were good. I asked her if we could give Dad some Imodium, but she said that she could not give advice about medications. I finally asked her what she would do if she was in my position, and she said that she’d give her father half of a pill.

I went to Walgreens and purchased a box of Imodium. A standard dosage was two pills, so I wasn’t concerned about crushing a half of a pill and administering it into his G-tube. I wouldn’t have thought that such a small dosage would have helped much, but he seemed a little better for the next five hours.

At 2:00 P.M., the doorbell rang, and we opened the door and met Kristen, the speech pathologist. When Dad wheeled out to meet her, she introduced herself to Dad as the speech therapist. He said that that was a shame because he hadn’t prepared one. To her credit, she laughed. The session might have been for Dad, but I learned a lot about our complex system of muscles that enables us to swallow. She had Dad work through a couple of throat exercises and left a sheet of exercises for him to practice between sessions. She also said that he could eat crushed ice anytime that he wanted.

After Kristen left, Gale helped Dad use the walker to walk from the kitchen to the laundry room, a distance of about 12 feet. He walked slowly, but his steps were steady and controlled. He stayed up for the remainder of the day, resting only while Mom, Gale, and I ate dinner.

After dinner, Dad felt like playing cards, which was our litmus test for how well he was feeling. By 7:30 P.M., I had won, and we were moving Dad toward his bedroom to start the nighttime routine.

My room was the only room on the second floor, with windows on three sides. On most nights, I could see the moon from my bed. We were expecting some storms through the area in about six hours, and the wind was already howling around my room when I turned out my light.

November 17. The storms that were predicted to start at 2:00 A.M. started two hours late, just around the time that I woke Gale and Dad. Dad had had a great night’s sleep, but he still had not recovered from the diarrhea. I hated to send him away for 4-5 for dialysis hours with these symptoms and hoped that another 1/2 Imodium would help him. Fortunately, the torrential rain that started at 4:00 A.M. had let up some when the wheelchair transit van arrived. The rain ushered in a cold front, and the temperature had dropped almost 20 degrees between the time that I woke up and when Dad and Gale were picked up.

Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait too long after dialysis for a ride, and Dad and Gale were home by 12:15 P.M. He was pretty wiped out and wanted to take a nap. By 12:40 P.M., he was back on the bed, hooked up to the tube feed and moist air. I administered his trach care and a portion of his midday meds. I became distracted by some shiny object and forgot to administer his antibiotic. Less than five minutes after I left his room, he was sleeping. While he slept, I called Sue, our friend and nurse practitioner at the dialysis center, to see what else I could do for Dad. She said that I could safely give him two pills, the recommended dosage of Imodium.

By 4:00 P.M., Dad was awake but was still very sleepy. Before he joined us for happy hour, I crushed two Imodium tablets, mixed them with water, and inserted them into his G-tube.

While Mom, Gale, and I enjoyed assorted beverages, Dad ate some crushed ice. A little bit of crushed ice went a long way, but at least he was getting a chance to practice swallowing.

Dad took a short rest in his room while Gale, Mom, and I ate dinner. Although he wasn’t feeling his chipper self of a few days ago, he felt well enough to beat us at cards.

While Gale and I were in Dad’s room running through his nighttime routine, Gale found a little scorpion on the floor near her bed. Gale was one of the most fearless women I knew, but she screamed like a little girl when she saw the critter. We had barely disposed of it when she encountered another one crawling on the bathroom floor toward the bedroom carpet. My parents had found scorpions in the house in the past, but I don’t recall ever seeing one, and tonight we saw two.

Although many things in our lives were uncertain, one thing was very certain: Gale would never walk barefoot in the bedroom again.