The New What Made You Frown Today Thread

[D'Snowth]

We're now entering the next step: hospice care.

I take he was a smoker, right? COPD, emphysema, etc

Yep. Started when he was 13, he's now three months shy of turning 78. Throughout my lifetime, he tried multiple times to quit, but he could never stick with it until about three years ago when having to be hooked up to oxygen pretty much forced him to finally quit cold turkey, since so much as a single spark is enough to cause a fireball of an explosion within the confines of an area drenched in oxygen.

Even when I saw him today, he told me he wants me to file a tobacco lawsuit on his behalf since it's what he's practically dying from. I humored him and told him I would, but let's be honest here: he not only smoked of his own volition, he was well aware of the health risks, yet chose to continue smoking anyway, even despite family urging him to quit, so I'd have absolutely no case whatsoever.

There’s still a chance through some miracle he may pull through. But if he gets put on a ventilator, that’s usually it.

It was a mixed blessing for me, my dad went in the hospital and was gone in 2 1/2 weeks. He didn’t have to suffer long.

I'm not going to lie, I have some suspicions . . . over these past three months, I've noticed that whenever he's been in a nursing facility, he's done pretty well . . . when I visited him at one such facility about a couple of weeks ago, he looked almost like his old self: he had put weight back on, I could actually hear him when he spoke, he was clearly in decent shape. But, whenever he's been in a hospital, suddenly he seems to be knocking on death's door . . . what are they doing to him differently in the hospitals that he seems worse there than when he's been a nursing home? Something doesn't make sense to me.

But I do know the sense of loss you may feel (I still hope I’m wrong). Now you need to be strong for your mom.

In all honesty, my mom is totally indifferent to this. Theirs has been a very tumultuous marriage (again, they've bickered like the Costanzas or Barones all my life), and she actually got quite used to his job as a truck driver, because she basically got a sense of freedom while he'd be traveling cross-country. The main reason she even stayed with him was because she didn't want a nasty divorce to scar me like her previous divorces did on my older siblings . . . that, and she depended on him for financial stability; otherwise, she had told me if that wasn't the case, she would've left him the first opportunity that presented itself.

I, on the other hand, am already feeling a sense of hopelessness and loss . . . he wasn't exactly the Ward Cleaver kind of dad (I'd in addition to Frank Costanza and Frank Barone, he also has some Archie Bunker undertones), but he's still the only dad I've ever had, and I do love him as such - his will probably be the first significant death that will ever have a real affect on me; my mom on the other hand has already been through a number of losses: her grandparents, her parents, and as of this year one of her cousins . . . if anything, she seems to be ready to be the strong one for me when his time comes

 

[fuzzygobo]

Your dad made it further quitting than mine ever did. Until he went into the hospital for the last time, his habit was three packs of camels a day. Every day for 55 years. His nicotine withdrawal was so severe they put four patches on his arm just to calm him down.

It’s kind of hard to win any lawsuit from tobacco companies anymore. The Surgeon General‘s warning has been on cigarettes since 1965.
Enough time has passed, smoking is now deemed an assumed risk. You smoke, you die, that’s on you. That clears tobacco companies from any further liability.

If this is your first serious close death to deal with, it’s difficult. All deaths are.
I’ve built up some immunity to death because I’ve been going to relatives funerals since I was seven. Uncle Ralph dies. You see him laid out in the casket. He gets buried. It becomes a reality that this will happen to everyone, so part of me is prepared for it. But I won’t lie, it’s still painful, you still grieve, you still feel loss. But the pain doesn’t last forever. My dad’s been gone 13 years now. It does get a little easier with time. But I know it takes time to accept. It’s natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. It will be hard for a while, it might raise a number of questions, but it passes.

 

[D'Snowth]

More drama with my dad. Now, he's gone behind my mom's back and had himself taken out of hospice care and has requested to, instead, be transfered to Vanderbilt hospital for stem cell research, because he's convinced there's still hope for him to have a miracle.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Vanderbilt in Nashville? He might run into my sister there.
I didn’t think you could just sign yourself out of hospice. I thought, just like a hospital, you need a doctor’s clearance. Otherwise in a day or two you’d find yourself right back in there.

 

[fuzzygobo]

There is still hope, as slim as the odds might be. But to sign yourself out might not be the wisest move.

 

[D'Snowth]

According to the nursing station on the floor of the hospital where he's at now, they said he was lucid and clear-headed enough to make the decision himself and they granted him his wish.

Now, I know for certain that the US has a law where if a mental patient is lucid and clear-headed enough to say for certain that they don't wish to be committed, then legally, their wishes have to be respected . . . that much I know, because both my mom and aunt were incredibly frustrated with how my nana's dementia continually worsened to the point where she kept getting herself into accidents, but somehow, she'd manage to pull herself together enough to declare she didn't want to be admitted into a nursing facility or anything, so legally, nothing could be done.

I'm assuming this a similar case with my dad, I'm not sure; all I know is my mom is absolutely PO'd, because for three months now, she's been trying to get him into the best kind of care or caring facility for his worsening health, and each time she did, he somehow would undo everything she did for him, this is apparently the final straw with her.

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

My uncle is back in the hospital again with kidney failure, and he's refusing dialysis.

They're looking into sending him into hospice care as well.

 

[LittleJerry92]

Hoping the best for him.

 

[fuzzygobo]

The only alternative to dialysis is getting a transplant.
I’d like to tell him I was on dialysis for a little over a year and it saved my life. It takes some getting used to, but it’s not that bad.

 

[D'Snowth]

As of now, my dad now has new residence at a nursing facility down in Sweetwater, which is about halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga - it took some persuasion, but he reluctantly agreed to enter back into hospice care for good, and luckily, his residence there will be paid for in full by his VA benefits . . . because, as it turns out, his Humana insurance decided they didn't want to pay one iota of his previous stays in the hospital over the past three months, so now we're faced with medical debt up to the tune of about $13,000. America's healthcare system is absolute ****.

Unfortunately, he can't have visitors for the time being, because another resident had tested positive for COVID, so the entire facility is on lockdown.