Dad: an avalanche of pain (June 20)

mom and i arrived at the hospital around 7:30 this morning. dad was fast asleep. then after nurse jill woke him up around 8:30, he was doing pretty well moving around and without much pain. jill asked if he wanted breakfast and he ordered a ham & cheese omelette, white toast with strawberry jelly and chocolate milk. she said in order to eat, dad is now required to sit in the chair.

a couple CNAs came in to give dad a shower and as he stood and got his bearings, he said he'd like to take a walk. with the walker in front of him, he walked down to the end of the hall and back and looked like a champ.

after the shower, he sat in the chair, leaned forward and ate his breakfast.



just before 11:00, i walked mom down to the lobby where aunt agnes picked her up for sister's lunch. by the time i returned to dad's room no more than 20 minutes later, things had taken a drastic turn for the worse. he was writhing in pain and asking god to take his life.

nurse jill came in and massaged his back, working out the kinks in the muscles near his broken vertebrae. the pain must have been blinding, but we talked about envisioning the breath coming in to his lungs like a wave and going out like a wave. i can get his attention pretty well with this method, but often the pain is so bad he just holds his breath completely.

while naomi and i went out in the hall so she could have lunch, dad got a visitor: duane steiner. dad felt well enough to shoot the breeze with duane, but i did come back to the room when i heard dad crying out in agony.



i pulled out a photo of barett from my bag and held it up for dad and asked who was in the photo. "Is it one of my brothers?" he said.  good drugs. good, good drugs.

i texted colleen to tell her about dad thinking barett's photo was one of his brothers and she replied: "Well, he is pretty jacked up. I considered Bear a brother, too."

he'll be pretty knocked out shortly so they can finish the MRI series they started last night. speaking of good drugs, dilaudid.  night, night, dad. see you soon.



the MRI showed no new damage to dad's spine so they're passing on the cement procedure at this time. one doctor said the break could be as old as four years, as they have an x-ray from then that shows no break. the three reasons a vertibra can collapse are 1) cancer, which he doesn't have, 2) trauma and 3) osteoperosis.

since dad was pretty sleepy, mom and i decided to leave around 8:00. we went to big boy and grabbed some food (pizza burgers, fries, gravy, of course).

Dad: That wasn't a kidney stone (June 19)

on my birthday, i spoke to mom and dad on the phone and they were their usual cheery selves. then, dad paused and said, "say. i gotta tell you something. i've got a dang kidney stone."
i said that's a hell of a birthday gift and we laughed. i got on a plane to chicago, and the next thing i heard was a text from mike on saturday at 10:55am.

"Spent the night with Dad in the ER. He and mom washed the windows and dad picked up the yard and over did it. He pulled a muscle or strained his back. He was hurting. Had a conversation with him that maybe it's time to pull back on chores. He said he wanted to call someone to do the windows, but mom insisted they do it. Mom drove them to the ER."

then, on sunday, father's day no less, i called dad from the airport before leaving chicago. he sounded like he was in pain. i told him to keep taking the ibuprofen and make sure to go in to the doctor as soon as he could. i knew he wasn't feeling well.

then, another text from mike at 4:57pm.

"Hauling dad to ER."



the sporadic texts from mike ranged from giving dad a giant enema to expecting him to break out in shingles. we didn't really hear much, except mike sent a couple photos of dad. after not knowing what was going on for most of the day, i called the hospital room and amy answered. dad didn't want to talk with me. she stepped out of the room and called me on her cell phone and explained that dad was in excruciating pain and wasn't getting pain medications most of the day.

i started packing my bags in case i needed to go home.

tuesday morning, i called the office and was cleared to go. i left maple grove at 8:30 and arrived at the hospital by 2:30.



mom and naomi met me in the hall outside dad's room. he was completely zonked out after getting atavan before his MRI. mom and i walked a couple laps around the hospital floor, and when we got back to the room, dad was standing up in the restroom with a nurse. i didn't want to startle him, so i let him sit on the bed before i showed myself. he was clearly surprised to see me, but still really incoherent. he fell back asleep.

mike said the MRI showed a compression fracture in the middle of his back. we'll find out this morning if they're able to 'cement' the vertibrae into place and eliminate (or at least greatly lessen) his pain. it's heartbreaking to see him in this much pain. when the pain comes, his eyes get big and he stares at the ceiling and his mouth falls open. sometimes his hands shake vigorously. sometimes he'll be laying there comfortably, and without moving, the pain spikes and he can tell it's happening and he'll quietly say, "here it comes, here it comes" and his eyes get wide and it starts all over again.

before he went down for the MRI yesterday, they took his wedding ring off and put it in a container on his bedside table. i took it out and put in on my finger, partly to keep it from getting stolen or lost, and partly because it made me feel close to him.

toward the end of the night, after mom and i had gone to mike and amy's for dinner, we returned and dad was lucid and not in terrible pain. mike said it was the longest period of time he'd been lucid since sunday. sydney trottier came to visit and dad was able to chat and eat ice cream.



wednesday morning, mom and i got to the hospital around 7:45. dad was fast asleep. the doctor who has been overseeing dad's case came in and shared a lot of information, and miscommunication. somewhere along the line, a story was told that dad fell off a ladder. to this day, no one is sure where that misinformation came from...

Chicago is my kind of town

a weekend trip was in order for my birthday. after work i drove to dawn's, where pam pearl and bill were staying until they left for alaska. dawn had a birthday meal ready for me (sloppy joes! yum!) and we ate outside on the patio.


after sleeping hard until after 8am, we took a walk along the river.

later that day, we took a walking food tour and ate some really great food including lou malnati's pizza, italian beef sandwiches from al's, chicago dogs from portillo's (7 ingredients: mustard, onions, relish, tomatos, sport peppers, pickle spear and celery salt), garrett's popcorn, and an amazing nutella chocolate brownie from the copper fox. it's awfully hard to pick which food was my favorite, but it's really, really hard to beat lou malnati's. (locations in arizona, too, to please the cubs fans!) of course, barett came along because, duh, food.



that night we went to dinner at la cantina (an italian restaurant--go figure) and i ate even more food. how can you say no to manicotti in chicago??

after dinner we walked a block to the CIBC theater where we saw HAMILTON!



i've been listening to the soundtrack almost non-stop for a couple months since i learned kristi got tickets for us. the show was really amazing and i hope to see it again.

the next day, we got up and went for a walk to millenium park where barett saw the bean for the first time.



while we were walking along the lake (partly because it's beautiful and partly because the breeze off the lake made us forget it was a bazillion degrees outside), mike sent a text to me and colleen telling us he'd taken dad to the hospital with a sore back. they sent dad home and told him to take ibuprofen.

i called dad as we walked and he said first he thought it was a kidney stone (which is what he told me when we talked on my birthday), but then he thought maybe he'd hurt his back by doing yardwork then helping mom wash all the windows on the house.

kristi and i eagerly waited outside wildberry pancakes for our reservation to come up. it was worth the wait! i ordered a coconut mocha and banana cream pie pancakes. yeah, yeah, i know. but the healthy menu went out the window with the food tour, so...



we took an architecture tour (seemed like being on the river would again make us forget how damn hot it was).



we had an amazing dinner at a restaurant in a residential area called parachute. everything we ate was amazing. and then we headed to the zoo where a beer tasting event was happening. and then... finally...



peg met us at the zoo and we got to see a few of the animals in the disappearing light and the dark.



the next day we ate breakfast at the restaurant next to our hotel and took the L to midway to fly home. i called dad and he was in so much pain, he could hardly talk. he was admitted to the hospital and we still don't know why he's in so much pain. i'll be sleeping again with my fingers crossed.

it was a fun, amazing weekend thanks to kristi and i'll never forget it.

still alive

time test

how long could you stand looking at this web page? do you feel like it's 1997? i made it 5 seconds before i wanted to gouge my own eyeballs out.

sweet Tokaches

my christmas card from aunt jo and big unc. this is very special to me.

the bird that stole my heart

i spent my morning with this little guy. and by little, i really mean he's little, by bald eagle standards. he weighed in at 3 pounds. at the beginning of the video when he's getting weighed, you'll hear two sounds that sound like grunts. that is the bird under respiratory distress. birds that suffer from lead poisoning make vocalizations that they never do when they're healthy. researchers can look and listen to an eagle and know immediately that they're poisoned by the way they move (as though they're drunk) and by the sounds they make.

it's unlikely this little guy is going to live. but i'll never forget him.

name that song

for a few weeks i've seen this commercial and recognized the song. i finally wanted to prove to myself i was right. and what do you know? i was right.


the version used in the commercial:



and of course, where i first heard the song as sung by alison krauss and used in the movie 'o, brother, where art thou.'

fly with birds!

if i weren't so terribly afraid of heights, i would LOVE to do this!