The Battle’s Over

This has been a hard summer for us.  We’ve had a great deal of fun, too.  In fact, we’ve had so much fun this summer, it’s kind of hard to explain why I say it’s been a hard one.

I for one didn’t think the summer was particularly hot, though so many people did complain about that here in the Metro Omaha area.  So it wasn’t the climate so much.  The flooding Missouri River, which was in flood stage for 2 months and has done a great deal of infrastructural damage in this area never impacted us.  We live far enough from the river that it would take a great deal more flooding than experienced… virtually a “Great Flood” of “Noah’s proportion” to get us wet!

I guess what made this a hard summer for us, well to be precise for me personally, was the decision we made in July to stop Dad’s Alzheimer’s medications.  We came to the point by mid-July that it just didn’t make sense to continue pumping him with those meds.  They had ceased to provide any benefit for his mind.  He didn’t know who any of us were; he couldn’t string together a single thought.  It was, in the end, the right thing to do.  We knew the ramifications of that.

Two weeks ago today, Dad took ill.  He was admitted to the hospital with a bowel obstruction.  By Friday of that week, it was clear to the doctor that medical intervention alone would not relieve this obstruction, and that surgery would be required.  We decided that surgery was not appropriate given the circumstances.  My brothers were called, and Paul came from Houston immediately.  The doctor removed the hydration line from Dad.

But Dad is a powerful man.  His body is strong, even at 86, one could feel the power in his upper body.  At one point in the hospital dad grasped my forearm in both hands and started to bend… I’m sure my arm would have broken if I had not extricated myself!  And the doctor’s all commented on Dad’s “constitution” being that of a young horse.

By last Tuesday, the doctor (a different one than the one who treated Dad Thursday through Sunday) heard sounds indicating that the bowel was clearing up.  We decided it still would not be wise to restart hydration, in part because his kidney’s were probably shutting down due to 4 days without hydration.  But, inexplicably that afternoon Dad WAS rehydrated.  When challenged, the doctor told us WE could decide to remove the hydration, and that the decision to do so or not was “ethically neutral”.  Thanks Doc.

While we did eventually leave the hydration line in over night, when Dad went back to his Assisted Living facility on Wednesday, he did so without hydration.  The staff there offered him water and swabbed his mouth. 

Saturday morning I stopped in to see Dad and he was asleep.  I was unable to awaken him.  On Sunday I went back, and he was still asleep, and his breathing was very labored.  I made the decision to stay with him overnight, because I was certain the end was near.

During the night I had a dream.  It was a very odd dream.  Or maybe it wasn’t a dream.  In this… dream?… I awoke, about 2:30 am.  There were 3 people in the room, with Dad and I.  I remember my eyes were virtually glued shut with sleep, the way they are when awakened at 3 in the morning.  I blinked repeatedly trying to clear them, and peered at the man and 2 women.  One woman was on the far side of the bed, leaning over Dad, whispering.  There was a man I was certain was Uncle Lyle standing with his left back to me at the foot of the bed, and another woman between him and the bed, mostly obscured.

I was certain it was Uncle Lyle, and when he turned his head as though to look out the window, thus revealing his left profile to me, I was sure it Lyle… that strong Strom profile of both his and Dad.  Then I fell asleep again.

At 7 am, I woke up again; Dad was breathing very heavily, but really no apparent change from the night before.  I stepped out to get a cup of coffee, and stopped at the registration table to see if Uncle Lyle had been there in the middle of the night.  Of course, he hadn’t been!  Returning to Dad’s room, I stopped to chat with a woman my age who was there for pretty much the same reason as I was… her father was in hospice and near the end.  About 7:20, I stepped back into Dad’s room to check on him.

Dad had passed away in those 20 minutes I was out of the room.

I may have had an odd dream that night.  But I really do believe that it was Grandpa Strom and Grandma Strom and Mom come to get him.  And I believed he waited until I left so he could slip away.

I knew Sunday it was the end.  At 2 that day before I left to go home to get some things before returning, I told Dad he had been a marvelous father to the 3 of us, and that he had won the battle he always claimed to be fighting.  I told him he could stop fighting, it was over, and he’d won.  And I told him, “If you see someone come for you, you go with them, and go happy!”

I guess he did.