November 30, 2007

Never a dull moment.

This morning, I got a call from the nursing home, saying my dad refused to get ready for his appointment at the cancer center, because he "just went yesterday." (He didn't go yesterday, but he'd seen a different doctor last Monday.) I had to call and tell him that yes, we had an appointment (we've been talking about it all month, 'cuz he keeps asking when it is) and that I'd meet him there. The wheelchair transport takes him. He then cooperated and let them get him dressed to go to the doctor.

So, anyway, Dad told me at the cancer center while we were waiting for his doctor, that Pam kept taking out her teeth. This was a huge news flash.

"What teeth? Did her teeth finally come in?" I asked. He said yes, but she keeps taking them out. (She likes to hide things in used kleenex boxes, which get thrown away. She's been toothless since July when she lost her last ones and has had to have pureed food since then while I fought with Medicare who said she didn't qualify because of her medical condition!) After he told me that, he took out his own teeth, right in the cancer center waiting room.

"Dad, please put your teeth in."
He started licking them, turning them over in his hand, giving them a really good inspection. People were beginning to stare.
"Why?"
"Just .. just please, put them back in, Dad." He gave me a look, inserted them in his mouth and then muttered something about how "Cheryl has her own rules,, and everyone else has theirs."
Funny how he remembered my name when he was bitching about me, but talked to me about Cheryl from then on as though I were someone else listening to him.

"What kind of hat do you call that?" he laughed loudly, pointing to a balding chemo patient wearing a hat.
"I call that a pink hat, Dad."
"Glad I don't have one of those," he said.

This dentist who comes to the nursing home is like a phantom. He comes late in the evening, and never tells anyone he's been there. I'm sure he must then write that he's visited the resident in their chart, but if nobody knows to look for something that's already happened, they don't. She could have been eating real foods for days if he'd let someone know her teeth were done.

Anyway, when I got back to the nursing home after Dad's appointment, I noticed that sure enough, Pam had her new dentures. I complimented her on her choppers. She said, "These aren't my teeth. They came in a package on the floor." I asked, "so, then, what's in your mouth?" She told me, "Oh, I've always had these. They're the ones that I came with." I was able to talk with the nutrition specialist and she's taken Pam off the pureed food.

Dad keeps pointing to his pants and telling me there's something wrong with them. They're falling off of him. He's now down to 202 pounds, and since he's lost more than 40 pounds it's no wonder that his clothes fall off. I keep buying them new pants with elastic waists and drawstrings, and clearly mark them with their name and room number. They always seem to be wearing their old clothes. I look in their closets, and their new clothes are nowhere to be found. They're in the laundry, I hope. Everything new seems ethereal. They and the staff always resort to the old and comfortable.

The solution to his decreasing waistline, I tell him, is to eat some food. I'm working with his doctors to see if we can stimulate his appetite. The cancer meds, the pharmacist says, may be messing with his appetite. They're also keeping him from having symptoms from the lung cancer. It's a delicate balance, but they're trying to figure it out, trying and removing the prescriptions for anti-depressants and steroids and you name it. Sometimes, I feel like Dad is one big drug experiment. When we came back, they warmed up the breakfast he missed. He ate exactly one bite of scrambled eggs.

Alone, I am somewhere between emotional catastrophe and denial, but mostly in a robotic state when I'm there at the nursing home and at the doctor appointments. I have become the parent, the role that I never wanted, nor pictured for myself. My older brother, Steve, would have been so much better at this than me.

Nothing's fair, is it.