On the Mend (Babble)

Thanks again to everyone who expressed kind thoughts about my dad in the hospital.  He’s still there, but he’s doing better.

When he was originally rushed to the emergency room they only gave him a 50-50 chance of surviving the weekend.  Now he’s on the mend.

My dad is an interesting man.  He’s gentle, educated, and kind-hearted.  He loves art, his books, his newspapers, and most of all his family.  It’s been painful to watch him suffer the indignities of an extended hospital stay.

However, he’s now in the rehab section, trying to put on some weight and gain enough strength to go home.  He is done with chemo.  With luck it bought us a few years of time, but my mom has decided she doesn’t want to take him back to the hospital again.  Living with stage four cancer is hard enough without the added trauma of that environment.  I for one don’t ever want to see the inside of that hospital again.


So now we wait, and hope, and figure out what life is like now with whatever new limitations dad may have based on his health.  I have my fingers crossed that maybe we can still eke out a trip to Paris if dad is up to it at some point.  Or even just a visit to finally see our new home in Milwaukee.  Either sounds grand to me.

And he just might make enough of a recovery for that.  Because my dad is tougher than one would guess.  He survived both a broken wrist and broken leg in India a dozen years ago, and had to fly home with a cast on his arm but without any treatment to the leg other than a few pain killers.  And every time I’ve seen him in the hospital since then his determination to simply get home is almost tangible.  Even in his most drug and pain induced haze I could see him fighting.  It’s not the kind of fighting people who don’t know him would easily recognize, but my mom and my brothers and I could.  There is nothing he wants more in this world than to be at home with my mom, among his books, working on a drawing in his sketch pad, and hoping one of his children may come by.  I can’t wait until he’s returned to that place.

In the meantime, my old neighborhood has power again, and the dozens of tree removal trucks have been working non-stop to remove evidence of the storm.  My mom sent me some of her pictures of the aftermath from the weekend I was there (still can’t believe I forgot my own camera), so if anyone is curious to see some wind shear destruction, here’s a little slide show: