A call for help

BLM WHM SMN SCH THF RNG BRD MNK WAR DRK PLD > 99

When my father died, I spent a great deal of time remembering what happened.  It was sad but also enlightening to see how people reacted to things I said.  I had advised him to not go to Orange Park Medical Center because I thought there was a strange force that was at work against me.

He didn't listen.  Or rather the rest of my family didn't listen.  He had always had trouble with coughing but I didn't pay it too much mind because I just figured he wanted me out of the house.  I sectioned it off to the possibility that he was doing it intentionally.  One day he fainted and we thought that it might be cancer.  He was really having a hard time with it so we asked for an appointment and they scheduled one in Orange Park.

They scheduled it a month later.

Now, far be it from me to point a finger at ghost figures but if a doctor schedules you for a cancer examination one month from now, he probably doesn't like his job very much or maybe it's his secretaries... who knows.

At this visit we find out that he was one bad lung affected by fibrosis and the other lung was relatively free of damage.  Later, he has a serious fit and my first thought was that he had a stroke.  Not being able to breathe is one thing but fainting is totally unrelated to lung capacity.  At least that was my "take" on it.

It's important to point out now that I am NOT a doctor.  This is for all you shitbirds!

So after he passes out one night, I ask him to process through the difficulty and not go to the hospital.  It's unclear to me what is happening and at that point my mother calls my sister because she wants him to go to the hospital.  I do not want this but that's because I am wracked with fear that he is going to die.

My sister, without my approval or without my father's approval calls 911.  My mother tells my sister that I won't let her take him and that was wrong because all I wanted is to have my father say that it was ok to take him and he really just wanted to get through whatever it was.

I am always a fan of taking things slow and going to the hospital to have them open you up and replace things is not my idea of slow.  But in this case I was wrong.  What was strange also was that 8 people show up to take him.  A police van passes in front of the house first perhaps to ASS-ess the situation.  WTH is this?  When did I become a threat to society?

So they show up, one of them asks if he is allergic to morphine and I clearly state that he is and I watch him walking up and out of the bedroom to get on the "stretcher".  I worried that they would mishandle him but with that many people I guess I should not have worried.

I am wracked with fear.  I decide not to go to the hospital because I will simply annoy people(as I often do) and I didn't want that to impede his care.  Two days later I visit him and he is fine and they know that it's fibrosis but they call it pneumonia and I realize that this questionable malady was just a complication of an already existent weakness in his system.

But he seemed in fine spirits.  He was weak but not having trouble breathing.  He was visibly better but not weak.  We talked for hours about little things and of course my direction in life came up.

He didn't like that I was living at home.  He gave me money monthly and it was enough to do little things but those little things were enough for me.  At work in my mind is that fact that I have to fight my DUI arrest, fight my termination, and fight the people out there that think that I have somehow damaged society through some ACT that there is no evidence for.  I have frequently wondered what would people have me do if I am harassed by even gas station people?  Would I go to work for a day or two and then get angry and lose my job a couple of times and go back to being at home?  My father and mother clearly don't get this, which is good.  If they thought I has something that was external they would be fighting it with me and that just means that my "infection" would now affect them also, which I didn't want.

This is a warning to all of you.  You have NO DEFENSE when this starts happening and noone will explain it... better than I am doing.

So he orders me from his hospital bed to stop playing video games and tells me to use the money that he gives me productively and I guess, he wants me to play a more ACTIVE part of society, lol.  That's funny because I have literally ALL of Jacksonville playing a part of my life and only a "somebody" has that kind of influence on people.

Sadly, that's not influence, that's rancor.

So I leave him but he gives me this look like somehow I am at fault for what is happening to him.  I am certain that this is not so so I remind him that I warned him not to come to hospital and that it was my sister that called people to take him, against his will, to these people.

He didn't want to come to the hospital but I was changing my mind and I have faith that my sister had only good intentions in calling 911 even if it was not by his choice.

TWO DAYS later... he is a different man.

He had had some difficulty one night and they had to do something that I was not there for.  My mother was there but after I had said what I said, he decided to get up and try to leave the hospital.  She got mad and raised the armrest and then just drove home because she got angry with him wanting to leave.

I was surprised to see her at home.  I didn't want to annoy people at the hospital but UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES did I want to see her at home with him there alone.  I would have gone straight back to see him but it was after hours and they would not have let me in.  My mother needed to shower so I understood in a way but I was disgusted with her... to myself.  The next day show up there and tell him that we will not be leaving him alone again but after a while I am stressed to the hilt.  I smoking up and a storm, which if I was drinking I would just be full on drunk all of the time and I literally went to the store to get some cigarettes because I was out.  Later on I show back up and he is upset with me that the doctor showed up and noone was there to listen to his report.  I send word that we would like to see the doctor and after a couple of hours he show up and leaves and doesn't say anything.  I was too weak to demand anything.  I was literally a stress cake ... or a YELLOW cake... yeah that's it.

I was a mess.  I had stopped eating.  I had not stopped smoking.  I wanted to bitch someone out but I really couldn't tell what was going on.  I wanted to "help".

Much later I would learn that he had undergone a broncoscopy.  That's when they scratch your lungs to see if there is still infection.  They had put him on antibiotics to help with his pneumonia but since one hand didn't know what the other was doing,  they must have not known that he already had fibrosis.  When I saw him again, after that procedure, he was a mess.  He was no longer capable of emotion, just weakness.  Something had gone wrong and he had lapses in his ability to breathe.  I didn't understand what was happening at the time but I COULD tell that he was different... much worse.

I have spent a good part of my last few years giving him advice on what to do about his inability to sleep.  It was all wrong.  His fibrosis is what was causing all of his malady and we had no clue.  I want to say he did the right thing but it was the wrong thing.  We should have identified it sooner but since all his life he had been strong and healthy, we didn't expect something like this.
Asbestosis is something that happens and they "say" that it can show up much later in life because only after your lungs are weak, due to age, do the little particulates that have become embedded in your lungs, begin to restrict their movement.  But he had retired 15 years before.  Surely he couldn't have got this from something from a ship?  On the other hand, he was having a lot of trouble with ships and medical procedures and it may have been just another thing that he was dealing with right before they stopped him from going on ships again.

6 days later, I start to make comments that this pneumonia is "taking too long" to cure.  And I mean it's not just uncommon it's RIDICULOUS that it takes that long but in all fairness I had forgotten that he already had fibrosis.  They start to concede that maybe he is ok to go home and I begin to feel better and they get him up and walking and then they let him go home... all in one day.

By the way, I am not a [medical-ING] doctor!  For the record.

So as sad as I was, I was glad that at least at home I could care for him.  I wanted those cats out and the birds out and I was going to wash everything and spend 24/7  with him to make sure his condition improved.  They had set him up with tanks of oxygen and even gave us instructions not to raise the air up above a certain feed limit.  This was stupid btw.  Later when he had difficulty the very FIRST thing we should have done was raise the air intake, especially to avoid another 911 call.  But it was not to last.  He had problems again.  He told me he was going to die.  I felt sure that this oxygen SHIT was something that he was now used to and couldn't live without but it was just... very confusing.

My sister calls 911.

I tell him this is the last time and that we should try not to end up at the hospital again because this will be it and they will not let him go home again and he tells me not to take him... and then BITCH calls 911.

At this point, I don't have a family.  I have spent my whole life trying to protect them all and all of them are just floundering like fish out of water doing schism this and schism that.  I can't tell who's on who's side or whether they think I want my father dead or THEY want him dead but someone is screwing it up royally and I... well I am just a passenger on this nightmare of people that won't let me be in command.

It terrible to be a narcissist.  You believe you are better than most people.  You believe you should run things.  You believe people just don't like to work hard because it's easier to cheat.  You believe you can help out other people's marriages in the most beneficial ways possible... yeah, it's kind of messed up.  But you know what's worse is knowing that you can help and people won't let you.

I can tell you that I am not brilliant because I woke up one day and called myself Jesus.  I studied hard I worked hard and I gave up a lot of social skills to study everything I learned.  I am better but not better at other things.  I have great skills and yet not great skills.  I can't fix cars, I can't fix things around the house.  One day, my father replaced the toilet and I wondered HOW can he fix that?  I am a great person but a have a lot of failing because we can't all be good at everything.  NOONE can.  I can type fast but I can't use a Mac.  I know computer skills and how to assemble computers to some degree and install more RAM but I can't tell you much about a router or modem.  We can't know it all so it's important to TRUST others.

I trusted that hospital, and they failed me.  I don't know how and you can read it there that it was a bunch of confusion and maybe they could have done better but I am disgusted with doctors.  I believe my father would be alive right now if he had just stayed home.  Noone else does so I guess that makes it my SOLE problem.  Instead of exciting attentive explanatory help and using my prodigious intellect to tell them where this problem came from, NOONE asked me a DAMNED thing, not once.

Later,  after we take him to the hospital a second time, I notice he is not in a private room this time, there is an unruly neighbor in the bed next to him at keeps wanting to turn the air down.  He is like the FIRST GUY IN HISTORY with lung problems that thinks the air needs to be colder.  I yell at him, publicly.  The doctor walks in later and tells me in his "expert" Spanish voice... what was that thing he said... palliative.  I spent my whole life learning so I could listen to some idiot that licks spicy chicken off of his fingers, TEACH me a word.  Yeah, that's the new way of taking the Hippocratic oath... that's how we do in Orange Park... palliative.  Do no harm.

My wonderful sister shows up.  I say wonderful but you all know what I mean.  And she tells me it's ok for me to go now.  Oh, but this is not before a slurry of, did I say that right SLURRY?  A slurry of nurses walk in to ask if we would like to have a flu vaccination.  My father looks at them blankly and tells them from his almost incoherent state YES!

My poor father.  That was perhaps his last attempt at humor.  Later after I dipthong my consciousness about whether my sister is at all related to me still, they call me and tell me that my father is at HOSPICE in a private room.  The doctor had said that if he made it 3 days at Hospice that he would be ok to go back home.  This gave me hope.  I show up at Hospice and everyone is peaceful and caring and I know in my mind that my father is getting better.  He is weak from drugs and that is normal but after his infection is gone he will be ok to go back home.

That night my father goes through some sort of dementia.  A very long night of stressful multi-meaningful words spoken from a dream.  I realize only NOW that they must have given him morphine because he didn't have any less air but I was again confused at the time.  I know he shouldn't have this but I couldn't explain it.  I ask to see the doctor but oh wait...  NO DOCTOR at Hospice!  And what do you know it's the weekend and his three days at Hospice turns into three days without a doctor... who thinks up this SHIT?!!!

The next day I shore up what little courage I have to ask for the doctor and I send word to ask him not to give my father whatever medicine he gave him but he could not be reached.

Ok I am falling apart right now... suffice it to say that after his oxygen goes down and bottoms out and the people at Hospice are wondering why we even have the stupid OXYGEN monitor that noone uses, that the doctor said to use, he ends up at 911 again.

The doctor makes a "funny" comment that my dad is ok to go back to HOSPICE again.  EVERYONE is on ANOTHER planet!!! Where are the people that want to save my father and see him improve?  I am surrounded, and I would LOVE to say that it was only the medical people but my own family is buying this crap even though it makes no sense.

They intubate him, he spends days there, unconscious but getting better because STUPID ME I see him as someone getting rid of a disease not someone dying to one and after a couple of days the family comes from New Orleans to visit.  Thanks for NOTHING, btw.  Instead of listening to my worries and offering support they hit me with my last name like I should give a rat's ASS what my last name is...

A few days later ceremoniously, they take him OFF intubation.  They tell me that he may die when it happens so I believe them.  The family leaves.  I am sitting there wondering if my dad will get better but they tell me my mother has signed a statement that he will not be allowed to regain consciousness.

They stop feeding him.  That says it all.  It takes 6 days for him to die of starvation.  I thought of Rachel.  Finally, a surefire way to use capital punishment that medical PROFESSIONALS are ok with...

PS.  Message to Trump... make sure your oldest, NOT YOUR WIFE, has authority to sign your DNR(do not resuscitate) order... because if it were me, my father would have fought tooth and nail for every last bit of life he had left(RAGE against the dying of the light)... instead of what happened.  

Message to Brianna... could have been worse.