Adjusting To Life At "Home"

Monday, 26 March 2007

After going to Costco over the weekend and stocking up on groceries and medical supplies for the week, we're transitioning into full-time care of Dad. It's a good thing I've been on Spring Break last week and this week. Yesterday, Jay piggy-backed and carried him up the 85 stairs from our house to the car, and off we all went to Aunty Rose's 90th birthday party. It was a nice buffet with distant cousins and relatives. Chris got to meet the extended Mau side of the family, and they all congratulated us on our recent marriage and my little growing belly. I even ran into friends from Seattle who happened to be in the same hotel and noticed me at the top of the escalator. Random! My happy hour buddy Gregg and his wife Jenn are also expecting another baby the day before we're due. It was cool to, literally, run into them.

This afternoon, Dad and I worked on the crossword puzzle while watching Oprah...His friends, Bob and Leo (my dentist actually, and his good friends from college days), brought us Hawaiian food for lunch and hung out for a couple hours, watching CNN. I did two loads of laundry. Uncle Gary came down to help me bathe Dad in the afternoon sun. Now, part of my bathing routine is putting on bug spray so that I don't get eaten alive by mosquitoes like I have the past couple days of bathing. We also took care of my dad's financial business and we'll have to figure out how to have him sign his name.

I arranged for a home health aide from Hospice to come on Tuesdays and Thursdays to sponge bathe dad although it'll be in the mid day, not his normal routine. We'll see how it goes. He still prefers a head-to-toe shower of course. But, we'll just try this out. I haven't been able to do my report cards or taxes or work on anything of my own yet. Now, a Hospice volunteer, Paul (who decided to become a volunteer after he had a relative in hospice) is here from 6 - 9 pm tonight. So, hopefully I'll be able to get some of my report cards done. I had to explain to Paul what ALS is, as he thought my dad didn't have his mental faculties. I showed him old photos of Dad in his athletic days, the sports article written about him in the newspaper last year, and most importantly, how ALS is a disease which never affects your mental capacity, but merely drains the patients' muscles and ability to move, and eventually speak and breathe. Paul and Dad watched 'Bizarre Foods' on the Travel Channel, read the newspaper, and he fed Dad dinner. The volunteers are all nice and generous with their time. Dad let Paul go an hour early (wait, did I okay that, although I think he only let him go because he had to pee?!) and Paul said he could come on other days sometimes if Mondays don't work.

I told Chris this is practice for sure for getting ready for a baby in the house. As with my dad, I always have to be on-call 24/7! Another volunteer, Phil, comes on Saturday mornings and has offered to scan Dad's pictures onto a cd. He has been visiting Dad for awhile now, so he knows the drill with flipping the paper for Dad and even will pee him with the urinal if necessary. It's nice to have volunteers that will sit with Dad and keep him company so that perhaps Chris and I can have some private time together or I can get my own chores or work done (even though I do find my maternal instinct working if I'm still sitting in the same room to make sure everything is okay...or perhaps that's my teacher wandering eye multi-tasking like I do at work?).

What's nice about Dad being here at home is that I get to share with him my growing belly. Although I've put his hand on my tummy when 'Junior' is kicking, he has a hard time feeling it (but, that's okay, because Chris has a hard time feeling the pitter-patter little kicks too, after all the little guy is only 3/4 of a pound in weight at this point in time.)