midnyte

I decided to go see my dad again today. He was alert and tried to sign to us, but alas he was the only one of us who knows sign language, so it was difficult. We came home and checked what he signed to us and he said he was alert, he hears us and he is hungry. He was able to say vocaly "I'm hungry" too. He can't swallow and he has fought them with the feeding tube, so he has been starving for the last 6 days. We tried very hard to tell him he MUST let them give him the feeding tube. I think in a way his quality of life is such that he would be better off passing over, but I'm not about to let him starve to death, that is just fucked up in my opinion. If you want someone to die, have the balls to put a gun to their head, or give them a lethal injection, don't fucking starve them to death.

It is so sad to think this way, but he has had an illness similar to Alzheimer's for the last 15 years. While he still has his sense of humor and is a sweet man as he always was, he can't do anything for himself anymore, he is like a big baby. It flored us he was signing to us at all. Sign language from a man who could not tie his own shoe anymore.

It is just so sad, he gets a really big dopey grin on his face when I tell him I love him though, so that is good. He heard that loud and clear and when I said good bye to him today, he saluted me. I am tempted to stay in Tucson with my mom and visit him every day. He really seems to perk up when I visit with him. All the nurses said he really comes to and does well when I am there. I talk to him a lot and rub his hands and feet and head. It is like playing with a 12 month old baby really. The doctors told me he could recover some. I said recover to what? It isn't like he was a vibrant industrious man before this stroke and septic shock. He was a severely demented old man who had just been placed in a nursing home because his needs became greater than my mom could handle anymore.

I am glad I got to see him again. I did not cry the whole drive home this time.