Yesterday morning, I got a call from a nurse at Lowman Home saying that Dad had talked to the doctor there and said he wanted to stop dialysis and enter hospice. They were ending all his medications but morphine would be available to him for pain. I was gobsmacked; when I put out the word to siblings and Margaret, they were equally so. We planned on talking him out of it; Anne who was closest set out to talk to him.
As it turned out, what Dad said was that he didn't want to go to dialysis TOMORROW (now today). After that, it was all miscommunication. The doctor apparently hasn't noticed that Dad is very hard of hearing, nor that he tends to answer yes to whatever he is asked. There was some rigmarole, but we got him reinstated at dialysis and I had the pleasure of telling the hospice people (when they called), no, not yet.
Cannot begin to express our degree of relief. Nor how mad we were. I expressed some of that to the social worker at the facility in hopes that nothing of the kind EVER happens again. And we're starting the process of getting him relocated to Rice Estate, which is under the same ownership but the experience there three years ago was much better. I was planning this anyway to get him away from Irmo Dialysis, whose work we aren't happy with either.
Sure I'm still mad, but this time yesterday, I thought my dad was going to be dead two weeks from now. So I'm so relieved I'm jaunty. And maybe we can get his care improved now and his physical therapy reinstated. Maybe.
No comments:
Post a Comment