On the Mend

Papa T. is still in the hospital, and he has a way to go before he's truly well. The poor man has been through the wringer in the past week and a half. As the doctor explained it, we got Papa T. to the hospital just as his pneumonia was starting so it had to settle in and get worse before it got better. And it did get much worse. In fact, about last Thursday, we were starting to worry that he wasn't going to get better. His oxygen level was really low, causing him to be very confused and to talk out of his head. You never knew what he was going to say. At one point, he was trading two cows for a sitting hen and another time he was hiring teachers. His speech got somewhat slurred, and we got scared.


He has slowly gotten rid of a great deal of the pneumonia, but he's weak and will need some rehab before he can go home. Shhh. Don't tell him that just yet. He's going to have a fit when he finds out, and it's best not to upset him until we have to. The bottom line is that in a couple of days they will likely move him to the rehab floor of the hospital where he'll stay several days, and when he goes home he'll have to have some nursing care. We've already hired someone to sit with him at nights while he's in the hospital because one thing's for sure, Hubby can't hold out much longer at this pace. It's just too overwhelming, and it's time for more help. The doctor says it will be five or six weeks before he's back to normal, which prompts me to say to all people over sixty, GET YOUR PNEUMONIA SHOT. Sister mercy, it's crazy how fast pneumonia can overtake a senior citizen. It really scares me. My uncle who recently passed away developed pneumonia after a fall, and after several days he started looking and feeling good, sat up in the bed and laughed with us and then his family was told the next morning he had less than a day to live. He was dead within twelve hours. That s**t kills, so don't fool around with it brothers and sisters.

It looks like we have several more days of sitting by his bedside, trying to convince him to eat hospital food and getting acquainted with every nurse who works the third and/or sixth floors of the hospital. If we're lucky, they'll have that roast beef special in the cafeteria at least one more time. Ug. I took one look at that and swore I was back in college as it definitely looked like something good ol' Winslow (Winslop) Cafeteria served up back in the day.

We've already had plenty of time to experience just about every aspect of the hospital in the past week and in the doctor's offices in the adjacent building since I had my yearly physical there this week, and I have a couple of suggestions for the folks in charge.

1. Can we not get a better hospital gown? I know the patient has to be accessible, but those gowns reveal way too much way too easily. I've seen more of Papa T.'s lower half than I ever wanted to see. I love him, but there are just some things better left to the imagination.

2. Is there a reason patient doors aren't closed more often? Everybody else has on that same gown, and just going from the elevator to Papa T.'s room every day for the past eleven days I have seen more hoo hoo's and wee wee's than I can count. And they don't offer eye bleach for hospital visitors.

3. Is it really necessary to put someone on a cardiac diet if he's tip toeing toward death's door, and you want him to eat SOMETHING, anything? Really, how much does trans fat matter at a time like that? If you want someone to eat so he can get his strength back up, for the love of Mirtle, don't give him dry chicken and tuna salad every day. I'm thinking of sneaking in a little serving of green beans cooked in hog jowl with a biscuit for Papa T.

4. Don't they make some kind of seat warmer for those exam beds they make you lie on in the doctor's office? I was laying under my lovely paper gown at the gynecologist's office yesterday (and can I just say my jewelry accessorized very well with that gown), freezing my patookus off and wondering why on earth they can't heat those things. I mean, we heat car seats now. Why can't we apply that technology to those beds? You don't have to use them on people with a fever, just those of us with thin blood.

5. Also, doctor's office staff should probably quit trying to be so politically correct when handing you those crazy paper gowns to put on. The nurse gave me a "vest" and a "skirt" yesterday. I promptly ripped the vest which was certainly thinner than a Bounty paper towel, and then I had trouble covering up both cheeks with the so called skirt. I told the doctor that I had cocktail napkins at home bigger than that skirt and offered to bring them next time. She didn't think I was nearly as funny as I thought I was. Perhaps, I should have offered to trade her two cows for a sitting hen. Maybe that would have made her smile.

Pedaling as Fast as we Can

Some of you have asked about Papa T., and I appreciate your concern. He is doing much better. He had a terrible time Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. All of the stomach distress and the medical tests, some of which involved fasting, left him weak as a kitten. He didn't even feel strong enough to give the nurses and doctors any trouble. After scoping him from end to end, they finally determined that he has diverticulitis, which makes sense given that he had eaten lettuce, berries AND cashews right before this attack. (My, he's going to miss his cashews.) They've been pumping him full of fluids, but he's still kind of weak. This morning, the doctor suggested they keep him at the hospital for another week for some rehabilitation because of the weakness. An exhausted Mama J. thought that was a grand idea. Papa T. disagreed. As I am typing this they are battling that one out at the hospital, and Hubby is on the sidelines refereeing. I think Papa T. is going to win this one, and I suspect he will be home later today.

He tends to improve remarkably once he's on home territory, so I'm not sure it's a bad thing for him to skip the rehab. One thing's for sure, he's going to have to change his eating habits. The nuts and seeds and evening junk food snacks are going to have to go, and we're happy about that. We've been trying to get him to give up the nightly Cheetos and Pop-Tart binges for a while to no success. But when someone's pushing eighty and wants strawberry frosted Pop-Tarts, who are we to demand he can't have them. Just because someone grows older doesn't mean he automatically surrenders his free will. This way, he's willing to eat better to avoid the gastrointestinal nightmare that put him in the hospital, and it was his choice, so to speak.

It's been a looong week for the Hula-gen's. Hubby, Teen Angel and Mama J. have all spent most of their time at the hospital, helping with Papa T.. In between spurts of rain and Papa T.'s medical tests, Hubby has been running home to mow and do errands. I've raced from busy days at work to the hospital in the evenings and then errands and home. My work day yesterday put me in the sun for about twelve hours. Summer finally arrived here, so it's currently 612 degrees in the shade and humid. I was whipped last night, and so were the rest of my peeps. We slept like hibernating bears last. In fact, Teen Angel is still sleeping. I am off of work today, and I'm glad. It will give me a little time to slow down a teeny tiny bit and do some paperwork and phone calls regarding Sissy's finances and accounts. I'm starting to get responses from all of the letters and death certificates I had to send out to various banks, insurance companies and offices. Egad, that's a long, drawn out process. We are pedaling along, we seem to be over the hump on this latest medical issue with my in-laws and we have an invitation to a ParrotHead party tomorrow afternoon, so things are looking up. I hope to be back to reading your blogs and commenting more in a day or two, but for now, it's still one bump at a time, and I truly appreciate your concern.

Just Another Day in Paradise

It’s been quiet around here for a solid week. Too quiet. So quiet that I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop because the Hula-gen’s lives are always filled with mayhem. It’s not that we like to roll that way. It just happens to be the hand we’re dealt most of the time, and we’ve come to expect it. And so do the people around us. Mama seemed shocked when she asked me this past weekend how things were and I said, “Calm.”
“Really?!”
“Really.”
“Hmm. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Yeah, thanks.”

But honestly, it was hard to enjoy our week of peace because I kept waiting for something bad to happen. I know, I know. It’s a bad habit. What can I say? I’m a little scarred from the previous tragedies in our lives.

So it was no surprise when Hubby called me at work yesterday and said he, Mama J. and Teen Angel were on their way to the hospital with Papa T. Papa T. had a rough Sunday with nausea, vomiting and other stomach distress I will only describe as Mt. Vesuvius. He failed to get better, and he seemed really dehydrated Monday morning, so off to the ER they went because they couldn’t get him into the doctor’s office. Was the mayhem about to begin?

Nurses and doctors spent a few hours poking and prodding him until they decided he had some internal bleeding and he needed to stay for more tests. He was not happy. In fact, he was downright surly. “The only reason they’re keepin’ me is ‘cause I have good insurance!” he told the rest of the ER. Never mind the internal bleeding. Ah, perhaps the mayhem was beginning.

Papa T. is not a good patient. In fact, he’s a nurse’s worst nightmare. You also have to understand that when he turned 76 years old he declared himself finished with preventive testing. He feels like he’s lived long enough to quit most of the routine tests that roll around every few years, (including regular teeth cleanings). The only stuff he wants to endure is necessary repair work. After his last colonoscopy he declared that he was finished with colonoscopies forever and was pretty ticked off when they found polyps and they told him he’d need another rear end Roto-router in three years. “Bah! We’ll see,” he said. He just hates medical tests, and he definitely hates the hospital. He hates hospital food, and he hates hospital gowns. I expected him to be in rare form by the time I got to the hospital yesterday evening. Instead, he was pretty quiet. Surprising. We made small talk, and he seemed pleasant. Still waiting on they mayhem to begin.

Teen Angel and I took Mama J. down to the cafeteria for dinner, and when we returned we found that Papa T. had received and eaten his dinner, which consisted of broth, tea and a cherry Popsicle. He hates cherry Popsicles. In fact, he hates any meal that doesn’t consist of at least three vegetables and two pieces of cornbread. “How was your dinner Granddaddy?” we asked.
“Terrible. I had beef broth and it tasted like S**T!!! The only thing that was good was the tea, and that’s not sayin’ much. I don’t know how many dinners I’ve had in my life, but I know that was definitely the worst I’VE EVER HAD!!”

Ah, there’s the chaos I was waiting for. I looked at Hubby and Teen Angel and we started to laugh. And guess what? Papa T. has to have a colonoscopy tomorrow. Did you just hear the thud of the shoe dropping? Pray for us, brothers and sisters, it could be a long week. But at least things are back to normal around here.

Food For Thought

Mama J. came through her surgery this morning with flying colors. Whew! Thank goodness. Putting someone her age under anesthesia is troubling, so we were all relieved that the surgery, although long, was uneventful. The doctor says we can expect about a hospital stay of seven to ten days. You know what that means don’t you? The Hula-gen’s will be eating several evening meals in the hospital cafeteria this week. Can I get a yahoo and thumbs up for Salisbury steak? Sigh. I didn’t think so.

I will admit the hospital cafeteria has come a long way in the last few years, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. I think it’s the smell of meatloaf mingling with antiseptic floor cleaner that troubles me. It just doesn’t smell very appetizing. Also, I tend to compare it to my earliest cafeteria experience, the school cafeteria, and it falls woefully short of that benchmark. The kitchen at my grade school set the standard for me early on for cafeteria food, and none of the public cafeterias I have visited since have measured up. That’s right. You heard correctly. I had great school food (until I got to high school). Oh, occasionally there was something repulsive slapped down on my tray (kraut and wieners-blech), but usually it was pretty darn good. I did not fear the lunch ladies. I loved the lunch ladies.

I went to a grade school that housed kindergarten through eighth grades. It was tucked away in the country and filled with roughly the same children from year to year. Not much changed at Franklin Elementary. The teachers stayed the same, the building stayed the same and the menu stayed the same. Every Friday we received a mimeographed copy of the next week’s menu. After taking a long whiff of that ink, I scanned the offerings, and rarely did I find something on there that I didn’t want to eat. I can count on both hands the number of times I took a lunch during my time at Franklin. Few kids brought their lunch, except Jeff M.. He always brought a sandwich and a bag of dried cereal in his metal lunchbox. He kept the lid closed, too, so we couldn’t see what was in there and be tempted to ask him to share. Stingy butt. It always made me want to steal his cereal.

We didn’t have a cafeteria. The cooks prepared the food in the kitchen and rolled it to our classrooms on steam carts. We filed past the carts, received our food and took our beige and yellow trays back to our classrooms where we ate lunch. As the lunch hour approached it was hard to practice your fractions when you could smell that food outside your classroom door and hear the younger kids getting their trays.

It was not uncommon to have homemade yeast rolls with many of our meals. They were served with a cold square of butter that melted and oozed when shoved inside the roll. I remember a lot of chocolate and vanilla pudding. In fact, I missed a recess in second grade for stealing a bite of Richard C.’s pudding. I couldn’t help myself. I thought he was cute. And it was chocolate pudding. Need I say more? There were lots of vegetables, including homemade mashed potatoes. My favorite was the homemade pizza that was cut in rectangles and was always served on a Friday. And it was always served with corn. My other favorite item was the yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I have a soft spot in my heart now for that kind of cake, probably because I ate so much of it as a kid. I tried to eat it carefully so that I got a taste of icing with every bite of cake. I didn’t care for the meat loaf, and I hated the stewed tomatoes. I gave mine to Felicia L., but I always found plenty to eat on that tray. We were well fed, and well hydrated…with milk. Besides the milk we got with lunch, we had two milk breaks during the day, right before recess. I rarely drank mine. I’ve never been much of a milk drinker. I got a little better when chocolate milk became available around third or fourth grade, but I rarely finished my milk.

Those were the days before school breakfasts, but a kid who showed up at school with an empty stomach was sent down to the kitchen for crackers and milk. I had one such trip. I remember eating those crackers perched on a stool, watching the industrial mixer slap vanilla pudding around in a huge bowl as the cooks prepared lunch. It was way more fun than that stinkin’ math I would have been working on instead in Mrs. V.’s classroom.

To hear other people talk, I had a rare, pleasant experience with my grade school kitchen. There are often days when I wish I could step away from my desk at lunchtime for a walk down the hallway to a cafeteria with homemade rolls and yellow cake. It probably wouldn’t taste as good as my memories, though. The food at the hospital this week won’t taste as good either. And they won’t have any homemade pizza with corn. Sigh. Meatloaf and Jello anyone?