I stopped by this morning to see Dad. I am later than I expected and I found that he was not in his bed. He has been taken down for a radiation treatment. He does have a nice clean bed to come back to. I sat and waited.
Soon Dad arrived back at the room I said good morning to him. The nursing staff had to get him back into his bed. I was intrigued with how they were going to do it. They rolled the two beds together and put a thin flat backboard over the split between the two beds. They had him roll away from the target bed to get the backboard partially under him and a sheet that he was lying on. Two nurses reached over the target bed and grabbed the sheet. Then two nurses on the other bed looked as if they were going to push. On the mark, they quickly moved Dad. His eyes got big as saucers as he quickly slid from one bed to the other. I asked Dad if he was OK. He replied that he thought he was headed off the side of the bed. The nurses settled him in bed, got is IV’s and other things connected. They started to feed him as I slid a chair up next to him. He did ask what he was having for breakfast. The nurse gave some answer to what it was and I looked at dad and told him to pretend it was vanilla ice cream. He said that he could do that and smiled.
Dad let me know that there were 171 bumps in his ride from his room to the room he was treated. He said it was always a bumpy ride except for once. He said that he always counts the bumps. I would guess he uses that as an indicator of how far away or how close he is to his room. Then again, what does one do when they are flat on their back staring at a moving ceiling?
I told Dad that I had been out punching holes in paper. We talked about that for a while. He got a smile on his face when I let him know that Janet punches holes in paper as well. He thought it was great that we had something we could do together.
We talked about going home. He said it would be Thursday because they needed to do something to him Wednesday. He was not sure what and then again he could have confused the day he is leaving. Better to exceed his expectations if he is going home Wednesday or Tuesday. I let him know that I wanted to stop by bright and early like I have been when he is home and he thought that would be great. Because he is in bed all day he said he sleeps when he can and he is awake when he is awake.
He also mentioned the desire to take a shower when he got home so he could wash his hair. I told him I did not know if he could get wet. I let him know that he could probably wash his hair in the kitchen sink. I think he is looking for a good bath and hair washing. I told him he could probably even get a good shave in. He looked at me like I had spoken some heresy. I just grinned back and let him know that I knew that he had no desire to shave. I did let him know that I did not shave this morning so that I could go home and enjoy a relaxing shave. As I gave him a kiss good bye and told him I loved him, he replied, I love you too and you are prickly. Well off to a good shave.
