Thursday

I turn my phone off at night. In the past, I had someone calling late, around midnight, with the wrong number. After my brother died and I had missed the call, I decided that if anyone was calling for that, it didn’t matter when I got the call, they’d still be dead. Not really morbid, just practical.

I turned my phone off Wednesday night and was greeted with a message in the morning when I had gotten to work from my parents’ neighbor telling me to call her right away because my mom had been taken to the hospital. That message was followed by another message from the night shift emergency room doctor at Fairview Southdale telling me to call her.

This, of course, was done immediately (I mean that I called each person back) and found out that my mom had been having seizures which probably started Wednesday afternoon and carried on into the night when my dad had called 911 at the same time that the neighbor came over to see what was going on to cause all of the lights to still be on at 10:30pm when they usually go to bed by 9:00pm.

My mom has Seizure Disorder first diagnosed in 1985. She’s been doing well but even with the best medication at the right dosage, she still has a chance to have a seizure every now and then. For some reason, this one turned out to be quite a large one. It wasn’t a grand mal where you’re wrything around on the ground, she most often gets the kind where all you really notice are large, glassy eyes and very peculiar behavior. What’s going on inside the body is very taxing. She was taken to the hospital that night where I met up with her Thursday morning.

Before getting to the hospital, I had called about three people including my uncle, asking him yet again if he could go over and keep an eye on my dad. There was no way in hell I was going to go over there and see him. I also started the process to get him into a nursing home again. This was more of a chore than it had been in October. For the next six hours, I would go back and forth between the “normal” medical floor of Fairview to the ICU where mom was transferred after the neurosurgeon determined she was seizing again to the medical building across the street was dad’s doctor is to get the paperwork done only to find out that dad has to actually come in for a physical and there was no way to get him in that day.

That’s what made me the most upset. I knew I was going to end up having a bigger battle on my hands this time getting him out of the house and into the home. I have to now drag him to the clinic office for an hour before dragging him off to the home and am anticipating him fighting all the way. I may be surprised. He tends to behave better around non-family members and he actually likes the doctor he’ll be seeing tomorrow. I’m going to switch into autopilot to get him out of the door, in the car, out of the car, into the waiting room, the doctor takes over, I get him back into the car, drive to the home, get him out, get him admitted. I’ll then go back to the house and get his belongings and bring them to his new home for permanent keeping.

The fact that my mom had such a bad stint of seizures isn’t too upsetting because I know she’s surrounded by professionals who know her and know what to do with her. I also know I won’t get a fight with her. I know that I’m going to get that with my dad and having to wait to get it over with is agonizing. It may have been very upsetting the first time back in October but at least it came up and was done in about three hours. This time, it started twelve hours ago and I still have thirteen and a half hours to go. I just keep thinking that at this time Friday night, it’ll all be over.