Tuesday, March 10, 2009

my dad is dying

My dad is dying. Wow, that is hard just to write. His kidneys have shut down, he is swelling up, he is in and out of consciousness. His one wish is that he does not want to die in the hospital. HE wants to be home and we are working very very hard for that to happen. He has been placed on hospice care and he seems to be at peace with it. He is pretty comfortable today with the morphine he is getting. He wants to come home and drink apple cider and be with his family. We are hoping to have everything ready so he can be transported home on friday. We need a hospital bed, oxygen, hospice nursing care etc all set up. I hope he makes it until friday so he can at least know that he is home. The dr thinks that once my dad is home that he will not live much longer then a few days. Then again my dad is a tough old bird and may just surprise everybody...but I do not think so. I think this is the way the story of my dads life will end. It is sad yet he has suffered and struggled enough. He is tired. He has great faith and he knows that dying is not the end, just the end of this life. Today when I visited him he does not look like the man he used to be at all. His blood pressure stayed around 80/50 and he just had a bad color and did not look like my dad at all.
He still knows what is going on when he is awake. This morning when Sterling was on the couch near me he asked me to teach him some toungue twisters. We went over some and Sterling really loved doing them. My dad used to LOVE tongue twisters. He would go around saying them over and over and also make up his own and add words to ones already written. When I saw my dad today I told him that Sterling was learning some tongue twisters and my dad got a HUGE smile and just shook his head yes...he knows what is going on around him but his body just is giving out.
He wants to come home and drink all the juice he wants to have and he just wants to make sure he will get morphine at home to help his pain.
I hope he makes it home to enjoy at least a few days

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