not very good news

The bad news is my father has colon cancer. The less-bad news is that since he has had regular colonoscopies that were fine until now, and he hasn’t really had any symptoms – outside the anemia that landed him in the hospital to begin with – and (according to my best friend Nurse Kim) that kind of cancer is very slow-growing, he may just have to have a section of his colon removed and they can stitch it back together and that will be that. We’re hoping very very much for that scenario, and I’m not going to start considering anything else until I have to.

We really don’t know the details yet – he had a CAT scan today that will show what stage it is and if it’s spread, but of course haven’t gotten the results back. And since it’s the VA, all we’ve done is sit around waiting. And he’s still there, although he might get to go home over the weekend. We all thought they don’t discharge anyone on Saturday or Sunday, but apparently they do. We’re hoping he can go home until they actually do something, because he lives a half a mile away from the hospital and could come right back. And he feels MUCH better than he did before he fell on Sunday. They gave him a blood transfusion and he’s getting iron pills, and maybe B12 shots – I forget – and he looks 100 percent better and is sitting around chatting with his five roommates and their family members and the nurses and the food-toters and everyone who comes in the room. He’s taking it VERY well. Of course, he takes everything very well. Which makes it easier for us to take it well, I guess.  Today I’ve really felt like everything will be fine. And so has Nurse Kim, AKA Psychic Woman, so that made me feel better too.

I’m sure I sound very very scattered and possibly borderline insane. That can be attributed to spending the last three days and three nights with my poor mother. Who asked me approximately 19,372 times where Daddy was, when Daddy was coming home, who would be staying with her, if she’d have to stay by herself, where I’d be sleeping, if the back door was locked, if the car was locked, if I had the car keys, if we’d checked the mail, if we’d picked up the paper, where Simon was, where Maddy was, where Calico was, where the VA hospital is (it’s half a mile away and she’s driven by just about every day of her adult life). She also asked many times if I know her brother Charlie; if I know Becky, my brother’s wife; where my brother and his wife live (right beside them) and  how long I’ve known Dana, my brother’s daughter. And she expressed great surprise that I’ve known Dana all her life and that she is, in fact, my brother’s daughter. Kind of oddly , since she seems to be losing the connections between people, she does remember Baker B’s mother visiting three years ago and sitting in the rocking chair, and she brings that up very often – how much she enjoyed that, and how nice Baker B’s mother is. And she knows – I think – that Baker B is my husband and that it was his mother who visited and sat in the rocking chair and talked to her.

Wednesday night she kept calling me Becky. At one point she was talking about one of my baby pictures that she has in the livingroom, and I said, "That is a cute picture of me" – and she said, "That’s you?? But that’s Beth!"

I just remembered  the oddest thing from my childhood.  I have this vivid memory of waking up on the couch in the livingroom one night when I was really little. I was probably three or four, because Mama was giving my brother a bath in the tub. The bathroom door was open, and I could see them in there. The radio was playing, and  it started making a weird static noise. That may have been what woke me up. But I remember climbing down off the couch and going towards the bathroom and saying, "Where’s Mama??" And she said, "I’m right here!" And then I said, "But where’s Dorothy????" And I can STILL remember how confused I was, and how Mama and Dorothy seemed like they were two completely separate people and it didn’t make any sense at all that Mama and Dorothy were the same thing.

Maybe that’s kind of how she feels.

Oh, and I’m SO going to hell because I have lied to and doped up my poor mother. After she wandered around half the night Tuesday and then woke me up at SIX THIRTY Wednesday so I got like four hours sleep. That night I gave her one Tylenol PM and said, "Here, take this – it’s your vitamin!" and when she still wandered around a little, last night I gave her two Tylenol PMs and said, "Here, take this – it’s your calcium!" And she went to bed at 11 and got up at 8. So tonight I handed off the Tylenol PM to Becky and suggested she hand out "calcium" before bed.

And speaking of bed, I really really really need to go there. I can’t even type legibly, and I’m sure I’m making way less sense than my mother. I think I’m just so excited to be BY MYSELF again that I can’t stand it. And I feel like I better make the most of it, because I don’t know what will happen next. Baker B and I are planning to go back down next Thursday after work and stay the weekend, unless of course Daddy has surgery earlier. And he may. Who knows with the VA. Right now it’s all a great big mystery.