2001-05-04 - 11:41 p.m.

Non-Responsive

And now, things turn very serious indeed.

This morning I was drowsing in bed when I heard the phone ring out in the living room. I looked at the clock: 8:25 AM. I hate when people call me before 10 in the morning. I heard the answering machine pick it up, heard a man's voice talking, then I heard it hang up.

Sigh. I figured that I might as well get up and hear what whoever it was had to say.

The message was from my diabetes doctor, who also happens to be my dad's primary physician. The message was: "Your father is non-responsive at the hospital and I also wanted to check on what his resuscitation status was."

Non-responsive????? What the hell did he mean by that?? Was he telling me my father was dead??? My doctor is not exactly Mr. Human Warmth.

I'm trying to re-construct what happened next in my head but it's very hard. I think what I did was go back into the bedroom and wake Lily up. I needed to hear a human voice to bring me back to reality so I could figure out what was going on and what I had to do. I then called the doctors' office, and got no answer. Next I called the hospital and got the story from them.

Sometime early in the morning Dad had some sort of attack. He was having a lot of trouble breathing they couldn't seem to wake him up. They wanted to know: did he have any sort of a living will that stated what sort of treatment he wanted? Should they put him on a respirator?

I remember Dad signing a Health Proxy sometime around when we were doing all the paperwork following Mom's death. I doubt if he really knew what he was signing at the time, and I couldn't remember what was in it myself.

So it was all down to me - what did I think should be done?

The prognosis didn't seem to be good. They said that he looked to be unlikely to recover from whatever problems he was having. They mentioned that there was a lot of carbon dioxide in his blood and that putting him on a respirator might help with that.

Like I say, I have issues with Dad. He's been a burden to the family, and to me in particular, for quite some time. If there was no chance of bringing him back to a semblance of consciousness I did not want him to be kept alive as a vegetable. However, it didn't seem like putting him on a respirator would hurt, so I told them to do that. I would dig out the health care proxy and find out what was in it later.

I then called my brother Harry down in New York and told him what was going on. Since I didn't have that much information on what Dad's situation was, Harry thought it would be best if he left work immediately and headed up here. He already had a suitcase packed and ready in his car because he's been planning on coming up this weekend anyway.

Next, I called my sister Janis down in Philadelphia. I managed to catch her just before she left for work. I told her the situation, and she said that she would try to catch a ride to Frown Town with some friends she had down there. She didn’t say when she was leaving or when she'd be staying, but she led me to believe that she would be in touch.

All the while Lily was sitting by me, helping me decide what to do next. She had classes today, but skipped them to be with me and to help me out in my hour of need. My dear, sweet Lily. Let's contrast and compare her with Anti-Romantic Girl who couldn't be bothered to come see me the weekend my mother died.

After the various phone calls, Lily and I decided to drive over to the hospital to see what the story was with Dad. I wanted to see for myself what the situation was and talk to the people on the floor.

Dad had been moved to the Intensive Care Unit. When I got there, much to my surprise, he was conscious. He couldn't talk with the tube down his throat (although he tried to) but he clearly recognized who I was. When he saw that Lily was with me, he broke into a hideous Jack-o-Lantern grin.

Well that was a relief. I thought that he was at death's door, but he seemed to be alert and alive.

However, things were not so cheery when I talked to the people on the floor. The nurses seemed pleased at his recovery but the doctors I talked to were less optimistic. The heart specialist said that Dad's heart was weak and damaged and further episodes might occur. He seemed very evasive when I talked about Dad's chances for recovery. He also made the cryptic comment that there were occasions when reviving someone with a respirator was "not appropriate." I guess his meaning was that if someone was having a near-fatal episode and they only had more semi-conscious medical misadventures to look forward to, it would be best to let them die.

So the doctors were willing to make very few concrete statements, but the future looked gloomy.

After Lily and I left the hospital it hit me that earlier I'd had the power of life or death in my hands. If I'd told them to not use the respirator, Dad would certainly have been dead. Would they have really let that happen? Well, putting him on the respirator was plainly the right thing to do in this case.

My brother Harry showed up in the late afternoon and the two of us went to visit Dad without Lily. We thought it best to keep her at home with the phone in case Janis showed up, and Lily wanted Harry and I to have our family time together.

However, when Harry and I got to the hospital Dad was out like a light. When the nurse shook him his eyelids would open, but he didn't seem to focus on anything around him.

Harry seemed to be fighting off a cold, and he looked tired and haggard. He was quite upset by the fact that Dad wouldn't wake up and acknowledge his presence. In retrospect he may have thought that he'd missed his last chance to communicate with Dad. This didn't really occur to me because as far as I am concerned, my last sensible communication with Dad was years ago. Harry feels that he's always gotten second-best from Dad, and this was just another example of that. I thought he was over that long ago, but I guess not. Well, he was very tired.

When we got back to the Hamster Palace, Lily reported that nothing had been heard from Janis. In a grumpy mood, Harry went off to spend the night with an old friend of his.

And thus ended the first day of Dad's Health Crisis. I've got a feeling that today was just the first of many.