Dad's Death

At about 5.00am on Saturday morning I phoned the Medical Emergency and Assessment Unit, the Ward that dad had been admitted to, to check on his progress.  To my complete dismay they told me he'd been transferred to another ward, Carlton Colby, the previous evening at 10.00pm, just an hour after I'd left for the night.  They were worried about dad's breathing and so had moved him to a ward specialising in respiratory problems.  I was angered and unsettled about what seemed to me a very sudden change of plan late at night of which they'd been no indication just an hour earlier.

I phoned the new ward and spoke to Sandra, one of the nurses, who didn't seem to be seeing my dad as a dying man in the way that the clinicians on the MEAU I thought had.  She was resistant to my visiting outside normal hours of 2.00pm to 9.00pm whereas on the MEAU they had given me a free hand to come and go at any time of the day or night.  I felt intensely upset and angry, but tried not to be confrontative as I wasn't really in full control of myself.

In the end I dropped into the ward at about 9.00am, after I knew Sandra would have gone off shift, to check on dad.  Sandra had told me she'd been communicating with dad, but by the time I arrived he was deeply asleep, I guessed he must have been exhausted by the sheer effort of breathing.  I returned to the ward at 2.00pm and stayed until 10.00pm, holding dad's hand most of the time.  As time went on it became clear dad was sliding deeper into unconsciousness and a doctor who visited him in the afternoon made it clear to me that the end was near, in fact that given the x-rays they'd taken when he was first admitted it was surprising he hadn't died already.

When Sandra came back on shift in the evening she was much more accommodating and helped me get comfortable on some lounge chairs and settle in for the night.  At about 9.00pm I went to a local pub and had a couple of glasses of wine to insulate me a little from the trial to come.  In fact, by about 11.00pm, unable to sleep and with dad hanging on in there I decided to go back to his place to get some sleep.  I was fairly sure dad wouldn't regain consciousness and I didn't want to linger by the bedside willing him to die so I could get some rest.

Driving back, psychotic with tiredness I tripped a speed camera, caring little.  I fell into bed and actually slept for a while.  At 7.30am I was getting dressed ready to go back to the ward when the 'phone rang and a nurse told me died had just died.  I asked if I could see him on the ward and got there about thirty minutes later and put my head round the curtains hiding his bed.  Dad was lying there in clean bedlinen and a tidy gown with a slightly incongruous yellow plastic rose on his tummy.  He looked still and dead, my strongest memory is of a red line on each side of his mouth where the oxygen mask had been.  I flashed back to the same scene in a nearby ward some 22 years ago when my mother had died.  Like her I could just make out his stiff dead tongue through his slightly open mouth.  I kissed him on the forehead and said "goodbye dad".

I said my thanks to the nurses as I walked out of the ward in a daze.  I was headed for the main hospital exit whilst racking my brain for the name of the ward on which my mum had died.  Suddenly I stopped and looked up and saw the sign "Shuttleworth Ward", the place she'd died.  I'd actually walked the wrong way, guided by my unconscious perhaps.  I retraced my steps and headed for the exit and my car.  At a loose end I drove into Lincoln and had a cup of coffee in a Costa in the old city centre, badly in need of a dose of ordinary life.  My macchiato tasted good and I felt an overpowering sense of relief.

In Dad's bed

Its 2.30am and I'm sitting up in Dad's bed back at his little bungalow.  I've just spoken to Sue about what's been going down here.  I got to the ward at about 9.00am yesterday and saw Dad in bed with an oxygen mask fighting for breath.  He can't sleep but he drifts between consciousness and semi-consciousness.  I spoke to the Consultant who said when he was admitted his lungs were full of pneumonia.  They're giving him intravenous antibiotics and now a saline drip as he is currently "nil by mouth" due to concerns that he will inhale food and liquid and choke.  He's lucid but very difficult to understand and also drifts between tacit acceptance of his lot and hope for a recovery.  To me, looking on, it's like he's having to work like a marathon runner just to stay alive.

We've said our "I love you's" and he is touchingly grateful for my being there.  At one point I thought his last words were going to be "you know how to use the washing machine?"  He could wrong-foot us all and stage a sudden recovery, but my gut is telling me no.

I thought about staying the night at the Ward, but in the end I decided to go back to Dad's place for some respite and to recharge my batteries, literally.

Now I have to decide when to go back.  Sue has counselled me to try to get some more sleep, but between jet lag, stress and grief I'm not sure where I stand.  I feel like I'm holding back a dam of grief right now in order to present a calm and loving face to Dad.

Dad is like a sailor holding onto to a life raft in a cold and choppy sea with only some strange sliver of hope to keep him going.

Over Tehran

Just over half way on MH0004 from KL to London.  Two clocks running in my head; 7pm Malaysian time and; 11am UK time.  The window blinds are all down and the cabin is dark.  My knee is throbbing and I’ve got a developing toothache.  Feeling sad and anxious about what I might find when I finally get to Lincoln.  I tried to speak to Dad on the ‘phone from hospital last night (Malaysian time) and could barely hear a word through the wheezing of his chest.

“Pneumonia” the Staff Nurse says, which they’re watching very carefully.  I thank her and follow my gut and buy a ticket on this morning’s flight.  As soon as the word ‘”pneumomnia” is out I remember that a friend who is a nurse once told me that it is known to clinicians as “the old man’s comforter” – a way to quietly slip off if one has a mind.  Dad has already made it clear that he wants to be treated as a “DNR” (do not rescuscitate) case, but I have no idea if this is in his mind.

I was looking forward to my last three weeks in Miri, then a few days in Kathmandu before going back home to Puglia.  Now my plans are uncertain and will be dictated by what I find back in the UK.  Quite possibly Dad will be sat up in bed when I get there, bemused that I have travelled so far so quickly and I will feel strangely wrong-footed, something that death is fond of doing to us.  You prepare for the worst and then the loved one stages a little recovery only for death to give them a sudden kick in the teeth further down the road.

My mind is filled with images of death.  I’m on an identical Malayasian Airlines plane to the one that disappeared en route to China and the other that was shot down over Ukraine – a country we are now approaching.   In my daydreams I see human debris scattered over wheatfields and the vapour trails of surface-to-air missiles, juxtaposed with funeral orations for Dad.   I’ll be glad to get out of this limbo and back on the ground where they will be hard realities to deal with, maybe.

Grounded

Stupidly I decided to go to an exercise class with a bunch of Chinese teenagers at a local gym a week ago.  The inevitable result of trying to compete with them in the depth of my squats is a knackered knee, which I'm now limping along on with the help of ice, ibuprofen and an elastic bandage.

I'm so used to taking regular exercise that I'm like a drug addict deprived of their fix, pacing Sue's apartment restlessly and willing my knee to get better.  Still I've had enough good sense to cancel an impending trip to Mulu National Park and rest up.

Then, this morning I got an email from Dad's friend Bernie.  Dad's been taken to hospital, but he doesn't think it's anything to worry about.  I live my life waiting for a message like this.  It probably is nothing, but because of the eight-hour time difference I must wait until this afternoon before putting in the inevitable calls to Bernie, the homecare company that looks after Dad and the hospital.  These occasions are either the real thing or a rehearsal for it in which one thinks through the options and makes plans for a possible rapid return to the UK.

When my Mum was dying, over twenty years ago now, I remember waiting at home in my little house on the Kent coast expecting the call from the County Hospital in Lincoln that I should hurry up there.  It was sunny weather and my love of history and the setting had me thinking of the Battle of Britain pilots waiting for the alarm bell calling them to scramble into the Kentish skies.

Dad is in the same hospital.  It's probably nothing, though my stomach tells me it might be.