The Oppenheimer Report 7/29/13

 

Dad Taylor is still in about the same condition as he was in last week, with perhaps some minor improvements. While we keep our hopes up, he still cannot swallow and now the question becomes, how do we provide him with sustenance long term? Right now he has an NG tube running through his nose into his stomach, but this is only a short term solution for delivering liquid food (somewhat similar to Ensure). So far two attempts to insert a PEG, or feeding tube in his stomach have been unsuccessful. To complicate matters, his out-of-control roommate (who was moved after the incident) yanked out his NG tube a few weeks ago, necessitating the insertion of a new one. As well, he has tried several times to pull it out himself, probably because it is terribly uncomfortable. Inserting an NG tube is not an easy procedure, and has caused him some distress. He has had the procedure done three or four times now. The next option for the longer term PEG insertion is a more invasive surgical procedure, requiring a general anesthetic, and this is of course more risky. We are not even sure yet if a surgeon will consent to do it, and there are no easy decisions at this point.   

There is a distinctive odor which emanates from the stroke ward, and every morning when I walk through those double doors it hits me like a junk yard wind in summer. It is the subtle perfume comprised of human waste, disinfectant, medications… and body odor. I noticed the body odor the first day I was there and thought to myself, “don’t these visiting friends and family members wash?” Then it dawned on me. As I was running myself ragged, transporting people to and from the hospital, arranging for meals, dealing with household hassles, the banking, the bill paying, and the thousand loose ends which were left unattended to when we rushed down to Toronto three weeks ago, I hardly had time to eat, much less to take a shower. After a few days that caught up to me. One day, shortly after we arrived in Toronto, as I sat on Bayview Ave. in the humid summer heat, in what seemed like a never-ending maze of road construction, detours, and traffic jams,, I realized that I had BO, and did not have time to do anything about it. When I had the chance I addressed the problem, and put a deodorant stick in my backpack for future ten second body fragrance tune ups. While hardly a substitute for a shower, perhaps it would somewhat mask my future odiferousness (is that a word?). On the high crisis days – and there have been plenty of those in the past three weeks - an extra half hour of sleep trumps a shower. And yes, I have since found time to wash, as things have “settled down” to a nervous waiting game.  

It seems that there have been periods in my life when troubles converge in a perfect storm that threatens to drive me out of my mind. One of those periods was 1978 just after I had just graduated from college. My dad was diagnosed with colon cancer and was firmly convinced he was going to die. I began my new job at the family real estate firm, where everyone likely hated me because I was the privileged son of the then absent president. To ice the cake, my older sister, visiting my ailing dad from out of town, experienced a severe brain hemorrhage and fell into a coma for about three weeks. The neurologist told us that it was unlikely she would ever walk or talk again (she was driving a car within 18 months). My mother and I were left to tend to her two young boys, who did not understand what was wrong with their mom, as we dealt with my father’s myriad of post- surgical complications, and visited my comatose sister in the hospital every day. That was one messed up summer. I became something closer to a man that summer, and the experience steeled me against lesser travails to come. There were so many little annoyances that cropped up concurrently that summer. For instance, I remember the painters who were painting the next door neighbor’s house, dropped a bucket of white paint on our driveway which splattered all over my mom’s black Buick. In that time of family crisis, when so many things went wrong in s short period of time, I remember my mother and I laughing about this accident as we wondered, “What next?!”

In Royal news, it’s a boy! Kate had her baby boy, and they have named him George. Why not Tony, or Iggy, or Felix? King Felix has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Two notable train wrecks in the past several weeks: First there was the Lac-Megantic, Quebec train wreck which involved the explosions of tanker cars, killed 47 and left a big hole in that town. Then, last week about 80 died and many more were injured when a high speed passenger train derailed in Spain. The conductor has been arrested for negligence because it was reported he went into the turn where the derailment occurred at around twice the speed he should have been travelling. Yikes! Was there a mechanical failure, or was this guy related to the captain of the Costa Concordia?

Back to the hospital.     - Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED