Hubbie stayed home today, to help me out with Daddy. It turned out to be a good thing too. Summer, our nurse’s aide was back today after having been out for the funerals. She washed Daddy, shaved him and washed his hair. He was semi comatose the whole time. He couldn’t hold his eyes open.
The three of us used the Hoyer lift to lift Lewy out of the bed into the chair for a few minutes. He managed to tolerate sitting up just long enough for us to strip and remake his bed. We lifted him out of the recliner back onto the bed, and while adjusting his position Summer noticed and showed me where indeed Lewy was leaking out of his cathetered penis. Where he ripped the catheter out with the balloon still blown up he slit open the inside of his penis, no doubt the entire length and possibly back to the bladder. The pee is still very rank. Smells like a UTI to me.
So Summer called Nurse Goodbody to see what to do. There was the general clinical description over the phone. Nurse Goodbody would talk to the doctor and call me back. Summer instructed us to be sure to roll him completely over from left to right to center every two hours. His skin is breaking down again. The rolling bed was not enough to prevent him from putting pressure on all the same spots all the time. We wished Summer a better weekend, and she was on her way.
The Hospice counselor came by a bit later to sit and talk about Life, the Universe, and Everything. As we talked, the nurse called back with orders for me to irrigate Daddy’s bladder. I had watched her do it before so I kinda knew the routine. I was to go do it; and she would call back in 15 minutes to see how it went.
I went in and put a glove on my right hand. I pulled the little grey stopper out of the input tube, and pee (or something, I choose to think pee) squirted all over my left hand. Alrighty then. After washing up I put another glove on my right hand. Shows how inexperienced I am. No it didn’t squirt the second time, but I’m right handed so the hand with the irrigating gun was…duh in my right hand, and again my left is touching things that only a glove should touch.
I have managed to brush out his mouth, bathe, dress, feed him, wipe up blood, clean up shit and stinky pee, and irrigate his bladder, …but still the mucus in the throat just gags me. Today Lewy was barely awake, mostly non responsive, but coughing up the phlegm. Fortunately Hubbie can take it……I can’t. I just have to leave the room.
Lewy slept pretty solid until about 9 PM. When he woke up he said he did not want anything to eat or drink but ended up drinking a glass of grapefruit juice and eating an entire can of Bean with Bacon Soup that had been pureed and a half “cup” of butterscotch pudding. Normally I’m faster with the baster than Lewy is with swallowing, but because the soup was pretty thick, it was not coming up in the baster very fast. As I held the soup bowl close to Lewy, to minimize the drips, he raised his head ever so slightly stuck out his tongue and started to lick the outside of the bowl. I told him to hang on I was being slow.
He opened one eye, sort of gazed in my general direction and said… “You’re slower than stink off of shit.”
“Thank you very much.” – As I squirted his mouth full of soup.
He has taken to waving his hand back and forth to indicate “No”. He started this a year or more ago to the puppies to signal no to them. They never understood it. I guess our dogs speak regular English rather than sign language. Never the less Lewy uses this signal on us. Perhaps he hopes we are smarter than the dogs, but so far we too have ignored this command and continue feeding him. Perhaps it’s the mixed signals, waving no with his hand, while holding his mouth wide open - tongue extended - waiting for the next squirt from the turkey baster. That is until he drifts off into Lewy Land.
There is no eating or drinking in Lewy Land. Only sleep and hallucinations that he can not distinguish from each other.
I believe he is taking that next step down. I only wish I knew how many steps there are in this flight.
1 comments:
old friend said...
don't you just hate it when there are no words that are adequate to say all the things you want to say...that's me right now...