There Have Been Better Days...

Word from up north is not that encouraging today. Dad’s not eating, and he’s sleeping quite a bit. Add to that the fact that Mom now has pneumonia and a fever. Sheesh. I know that Dad’s illness is stressing Mom to pieces, and stress lowers the strength of your immune system, so….bingo: pneumonia. Of course, she still plans to just tough it out and do whatever the heck she feels like doing. However, pneumonia with a 103.8° fever is a pretty big monkey to carry on your back, and it showed.

My Aunt Linda, and Uncle Robert (bless them) have been in the hospital pretty much the whole time Dad’s been in there, and Uncle Robert managed to get Mom to head home, take a cold shower, take her meds, and get her feverish butt in bed. He did so by simply saying this: “Mary, if you don’t go home right now and get in the shower, I’ll take you home and put you in there myself…and that’s gonna embarrass the both of us. I’d rather not do that, so get moving.” Wonder of wonders, she did. Knowing Uncle Robert, he’d have done it.

So I’ve been a bit distracted today, worried about my parents. Mom’s tough as old shoe leather (that’s just an expression, Mom…I’m not in any way saying that you LOOK like old shoe leather), but she’s still human. My father’s toughness is freakin’ legendary throughout our family on both sides, but he apparently has his limits. I just hate that we may have finally found out exactly what those limits are.

He’s not done yet, though, and I’m not quite ready to start talking about the good old days I’ve had with him as though he’s already gone. That old man is, in his quiet, stubborn way, still kicking and scratching, clawing and biting, even though it seems to the naked eye that he’s just laying quietly in bed, dozing. It would not surprise me in the least if he perked up tomorrow and started annoying the doctors and nurses again. It’s happened before. I mean, the man has kicked cancer in its proverbial nutsack not once, but twice. A death sentence for some has been nothing but an inconvenience to him. This is a man who lost his left hand in an unbelievably painful fashion while in his thirties, and yet never complained about it within my hearing…NOT. ONE. TIME. He’s a fighter. So I think it’s not unreasonable to hope he gets better, even just for awhile. Hopefully, he’ll challenge me to a grappling match this time. I mean, it should finally be a fair fight since he’s only got one hand, right?

Thanks for the well-wishes, folks. I’ll try and keep y’all updated.