Dad Is Dying

Apr 15 2009 ∞
“

It is not unusual for dying persons to experience sensory changes. Sometimes they misperceive a sound or get confused about some physical object in the room. They might hear the wind blow but think someone is crying or see the lamp in the corner and think someone is standing there. These types of misperceptions are called illusions. They are misunderstandings about something that is actually in their surroundings.

Another type of misperception is hallucination. Dying persons may hear voices that you cannot hear, see things that you cannot see, or feel things that you are unable to touch or feel.
— Signs of Approaching Death, William Lamers, M.D. Medical Consultant, Hospice Foundation of America
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Apr 12 2009 ∞

"Laughing or crying is what a human being does when there's nothing else he can do."

  • Playboy: Another way of dealing with sadness, of coming to terms with problems you can't solve, is through humor. Is that your way?
  • Kurt Vonnegut: Well, I try... but laughter is a response to frustration, just as tears are, and it solves nothing, just as tears solve nothing. Laughing or crying is what a human being does when there's nothing else he can do. Freud has written very soundly on humor — which is interesting, because he was essentially a humorless man. The example he gives is of the dog who can't get through the gate to bite a person or fight another dog. So he digs dirt. It doesn't solve anything, but he has to do something. Crying or laughing is what a person does instead.
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Be careful with your claim.

  • Dad: You better be careful.
  • Me: With what?
  • Dad: With that [looks at my laptop].
  • Me: With what? My computer?
  • Dad: No. Your claim. You've got it going there.
  • Me: What? I'm sorry. What are you referring to?
  • Dad: Your claim. There had to be something. There had to be something.
  • Dad: [pause]
  • Dad: I don't know.
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"Did [the turkeys] make him happy?"

  • Me: Dad just called me into his room to point out the turkeys he just saw outside his window.
  • You: Haha. That is cute
  • Me: Right. But there were no turkeys.
  • You: Oh.
  • You: [pause]
  • You: Did they make him happy?
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Apr 09 2009 ∞
“ My thinking is off because of these drugs. I know what I want to say, but I don’t know how to get it out there. There’s so much that I want to say, but I can’t get it out. Even right now, trying to say what I just got through saying is difficult. [The hospice nurses] say to me, ‘Sir, with all the drugs you’re on, we don’t even know how you function.’ And I tell them, ‘What is it that makes you think I am functioning?’
— Dad via the phone.
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“ My dad was a logger and there was an old statement: ‘If the lead team can’t pull the wagon, don’t hitch it up.’ I looked at [the doctor] and said, ‘That’s his statement; that’s my statement.’ Unplug the man. Let him die with dignity.
— Tom Morgan, as told to StoryCorps.
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“ The day before he died he went to the bathroom and washed his hands. As he reached for the towel his wedding ring went into the toilet and I was just devastated. So he turned around and said to me ‘[…] It’s the end.’
— Rita Mitrani, as told to StoryCorps.
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“I’d give a million dollars to [shit] normally.”

After receiving an increased dosage of pain medication, Dad needed another enema last week and the opiates began to bind him up. “I’d give a million dollars to go normally, just once,” he told me.

I just saw the dog net door, tail engorged with tumors and eyes white-cloudy with blindness, standing on the lawn, shaking over a pile of his own shit. He looked confused but accomplished.

It would appear that on our deathbeds, we and dogs find pleasure in once-seemingly-simple accomplishments.

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“ Business at the very end of life is messy.
— As told by bioethicist Dr. Robert Martensen to Terry Gross on WHYY’s Fresh Air.
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“ My father had [a good death]. He was a systems engineer. In his 80s, he developed serious pulmonary problems, and he was very savvy about how things can go wrong in complicated systems, which hospitals are. To make sure that nothing was done to him that only technically extended his life, he made sure that his wife, doctor and hospital had copies of his medical directives. He didn’t have an extended period of dying because he avoided being put on a ventilator. My father died comfortable, surrounded by people who loved him. He was lucid till about five minutes before his death.
— Dr. Robert L. Martensen in “A Front-Row Seat as a Health Care System Goes Awry: A Conversation With Robert L. Martensen” (NYTimes)
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