Background and Significance

I was visiting my parents in Florida for a weekend with friends in March, taking advantage of free lodging, a guaranteed meal or two paid for, and easy access to sun and sand and seventy-five degree weather. On Friday night he was my father; older and somewhat of a curmudgeon but generally charming and engaging despite a minor shoulder injury. Saturday he couldn’t get out of bed without my mother supporting him. By midnight he was notably disoriented and confused and by the time the ambulance came he was only reciting number sequences and moaning in pain. Throughout Sunday as my mother ferried back and forth from the hospital I offered to cancel my flight home, to stay and support her while Daddy was laid up. She denied me twice, relenting finally when a doctor suggested he may have had a stroke. I stayed for ten days.

It turned out to be massive septic shock. An infection in his shoulder that entered the bloodstream. Renal failure. Delirium. Dehydration. Dangerously low blood pressure. That first night in the hospital he was slumped over, mouth agape and eyes unfocused. It was terrifying.

 He began to steadily improve; a little more recognition here, a little more range of motion there. He loved to give people a hard time, to joke with the doctors, flirt with the nurses – especially the blonde ones – and make us roll our eyes. When my brother arrived one morning his greeting was “Did you sleep in that shirt?” He was released to rehabilitation hospitals and reentered the hospital three times before he was cleared to go home to Connecticut. At each subsequent infection people kept asking if we wanted to ‘let him go,’ unaware that weeks earlier he had been driving, managing his own business, taking the boat out to go fishing on his own. He was completely independent, until he wasn’t. At seventy-eight, apparently this is remarkable. But it’s just the way he was. The way he is.

The prognosis is not good, but it is not acutely bad. Daddy's surgeon says his cognitive ability will steadily decline, though not how fast or from what point we'll be starting. He says eventually Daddy will have to be in a continuing care facility, but not how soon. He says the infections will continue to come back until he can no longer withstand the havoc the wreak on his body. But we don't know how often, or how severely, or anything, really.

There are many frustrating aspects to this experience, but one of the most for me is that there is no specific illness, no name, no foundation, no community, no walkathon. He got an infection, and then another one and another one. He gets confused sometimes, and agitated. That's it. But that is what will kill him.

I am a clinical psychology graduate student. My job, my career, my life is figuring out how to make people manage problems better, feel fulfilled, survive painful experiences. And I have no idea how to make this better for him. For my mother. For my brothers. For myself. My coping skill has been scientific; I read scholarly articles on the consequences of delirium, treatment for caregivers of those with dementia, and am comforted by knowing. But I also know that my father may not see me graduate with a PhD, he may not walk me down the aisle, he will likely never meet my children. I am twenty-nine years old.