Out of the ICU!

Getting out of the ICU was a lot less exciting than I’d hoped. I wanted confetti and horns, but we just put my dad in a wheel chair, grabbed all his stuff, and rolled on down the hall.

Dad and the Butcher played cribbage and I worked on the TCP afghan, which is going to be pretty neat, I think.  I need to take pictures, I guess.

My mom insists on kissing everyone and I’m about over that, I must say.  As much as I love smooches, I hate kisses from family members.  I have issues, I guess.

Speaking of family members, after his mid-day medication, my dad started babbling on about Mack and saying that he half expected Mack to show up claiming to be his husband.  Then he started to ponder whether he could pass Mack off as his dad, since they both have brown eyes.

The Butcher was all, “But Mack looks a lot younger than you.” and my dad was all “That’s because I wouldn’t eat my vegetables like he told me to when I was a kid.”

That made me laugh hard then and laugh again to tell you about it.  I guess it’s not polite to make fun of a person for the silly things he says when he’s high, but I still am going to let you all laugh about it, too.

We have to learn how to help him up and into chairs and out of bed and into bed and onto the toilet and stuff before he gets to come home, and frankly, I’m a little nervous about that, but excited for him to get out of there, as well.

The hospital is full of sick people and he isn’t sick, so I’d like to get him out of there before he is.

His nurse thinks that he’ll be home on Friday, no problem.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Off to See Dad!

We’re trying to find a cribbage board, a deck of cards, a robe (in case they get Dad walking around and he doesn’t want to moon the nurses; he may want to moon the nurses*), and a pen for score keeping.  I’m bringing the start of the TCP afghan to work on while the Butcher and Dad play cribbage and I’ll join in on rummy when they get to that.  The Butcher wasn’t sure that Dad would be up for cards while he’s on the morphine, but Dad said that this might be the Butcher’s only chance to beat him at cards.

The nurse helpfully pointed out that they only give morphine in the first 48 hours and after that, he’ll just be on one of those -cet medicines.

Ha, I kind of love Dad’s nurses.  We’ve brought chocolate for all of them–a box for the surgical team, a box for the day shift ICU folks, and Lindor truffles for the night shift ICU folks, and a box in reserve for the new team when we get him moved out of the ICU.

And Dad has provided them a sympathetic ear while they sigh and roll their eyes about the guy next door, so I think between that and the chocolate, they love him**.

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*Did I tell you that he had to get a pillow to sit on when he sits in the chair because, as one of the nurses helpfully pointed out, “Your dad has no butt!”?

**I, on the other hand, secretly love the guy next door.  He came in at the same time as Dad on Monday and was cussing up a storm and demanding to just “get this damn thing over with” and throwing his hat around.  And, now, after heart surgery, in the ICU, he’s demanding to be released from the hospital, because he feels fine.  Since they won’t let him go home, his new goal seems to be to just find a moment when they aren’t paying attention when he can sneak out and have a cigarette.  How he thinks he’s going to achieve this hooked up to eighty million tubes and wires and monitors and with every nurse in the ICU keeping an eye on him, I’m not sure, but I admire his devotion to his task.  And his pig-headed lack of willingness to even quit smoking for two days while he’s on morphine.  I mean, seriously, if ever you were going to make a break from tobacco, this would be an easy time, but no, he’s going to have him a cigarette.

Oh, Dear Methodists, part dos or dios

I did want to say, though, how wonderful it was to have all the ministers show up on Monday, while Dad was in surgery.  There’s a part of my dad’s work that we’ve not really been privy to–his work with other ministers.  I mean, I could tell you that he’s always sought out or started monthly ministers’ breakfasts, where all the clergy in town are welcome to come and just talk and be heard by other people who understand what they’re going through.

And I could list for you all his complaints about how isolated Methodist ministers are from each other and how hard that can be on them, especially on folks just starting out in the ministry.

But I really had no idea of the true scope of what he does to combat that, until minister after minister showed up to sit with us–not to minister to us, but to be there for him.  One guy found us at breakfast and talked for a long time about how important it was to him that my dad would go out to breakfast with him and help him negotiate congregational issues and give him perspective on problems he’s having with the church he’s serving.

Another minister said that they couldn’t afford to lose my dad, so if he needed his ass kicked for any reason, if he wasn’t doing what the doctors said or if he was giving us a hard time or if he refused to get out of bed, to just let him know and he’d be over to help.

That meant a lot to me, to put it mildly.

My dad is a complicated man and we’re probably never going to have an easy relationship, but I love him and it makes me proud to know that other people love him, too.

This, to me, on its best days, is what the Church looks like.

And I do miss that part.