Emergency Trip to Great Falls

We had to travel to Great Falls last Monday. My aunt called and told me that my dad was in the hospital. He had called the neighbor asking for a gun because he just wanted to die. The neighbor went over to find exposed electrical wires, knives, and a gun (I imagine he didn't have any bullets or the gun was non-functioning). The neighbor called 9-11.

It turned out that my dad was in an enormous amount of pain and had oxygen saturations in the 70's. He was having a very difficult time breathing. When they listened to his lungs, they couldn't hear anything. He had a punctured lung. He told me that he has been falling frequently at home and likely got the puncture during one of the falls.

I think most people who read this blog knows, but just in case anyone is unaware...my dad has a genetic disease called spinocerebellar ataxia. This is a progressively debilitating and incurable disease. My grandmother started showing signs in her mid-forties and died in 2006. She slowly declined over the course of 20 years or so. My dad started showing signs a bit earlier and seems to be progressing more rapidly. He is 51 and looks to be about 70. He walks unsteadily with a walker and is probably about a year from a wheelchair. His gait, coordination, speech, and eyesight with continually deteriorate until he is unable to preform daily activities.

He ended up staying in the hospital for one week. The first couple of days were rough because he continued to voice his desire to die. At that point, we were seriously considering hospice because he wasn't eating or drinking anything. Then the doctor prescribed him a pain medication that works on the nerves (his disease causes very painful degeneration of the nerves) and he became a different person. It seems that he has been living in terrible pain for some time now, he refused to see any doctors or take any meds since his last hospital stay five years ago. The pain med along with the anti-depressant have really helped his outlook. He has been much less stubborn, accepting of help, and is even dealing with the real future.

Dad has been living alone and stubbornly refusing any assistance. For years he denied that he even had the disease and sought refuge in some far-out religious views. He felt that God would cure him if he had enough faith and that he would go on to live a normal life. It was infuriating and frustrating to talk to him sometimes because there was no recognition of the reality of his situation or need for future planning. Something seems to have genuinely shifted in him after this incident. He let me help, and not just a little. He was happy to let me basically take charge and get the shit done that needed to be done for years. He agreed that he couldn't stay in the house anymore and didn't flinch when we told him it was getting cleaned out and put on the market. We got health care and financial powers of attorney done. I have gotten rid of one of his cars and am working on the second one. The man has been paying for car insurance but hasn't driven in three years. He was also paying for internet for a computer that hasn't been touched in at least four years. We got all of that canceled. I got all the money he has been hoarding at home in the bank.

He is now staying in a nursing home for a stint of rehab. The plan is for him to travel around and live with different family members after that. He has been talking about doing this for some time. I was very hesitant at first, but have come around over the last week. Who knows how much time he has left, and if he is able to handle it, I don't want to stop him from having one last adventure in this lifetime. He will stay with my uncle Joe in Wyoming for a couple of months and then head down here when we leave Great Falls in August. I don't know how it's going to work in our house (multiple levels), but we are willing to give it a try. After that he wants to go straight to the nursing home.

The house was a HORRIBLE mess. There was standing water in the basement along with a few years worth of mold growth. Mice shit everywhere. I am afraid for the person they hired to take everything to the dump. It's so hard to believe that he has been living like that for so long.

We just got home a couple of days ago and are trying to catch up with life. I have fallen behind with everything, but the walk is weighing most heavily at this point. Hopefully we can get things under control next week.