forgive me dad

last thursday my dad went in for surgery - cystoscopy and transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) under anesthesia. when i talked to him after the surgery, he seemed a little confused the first day - but not too bad. the second day after surgery he was babbling nonstop - and bleeding. they had given him 4 pints of blood by now and the nurses could not tell me why he was babbling nonstop but they did tell me that he will sit there and have conversations and no one is in the room with him. the third day they decided they needed to go back in to see if they could stop the bleeding. they evacuated a very large clot and cauterized bleeders - again under anesthesia.

the fourth day i talked to yet another nurse - a guy named steve, who is from my ittybitty hometown and knows my dad. i asked him about this terrible confusion and babbling - as i had done with the previous nurses AND who could not give me an acceptable answer. steve told me that he has seen this quite often with older people that have had anesthesia and that sometimes they come out of it and sometimes they don't. god bless steve for telling me this because i had no idea why this had come upon dad soooo fast - virtually overnight! i had no clue that anesthesia could have that type of short term? long term? effect on some older people.

the docs stopped the bleeding and he is peeing clear now so it's time to discharge him - even though he is in a totally confused state of mind. the hospital social worker calls yesterday and tells me that he simply cannot be alone. well, that's another problem because he lives alone and eight hours from me.

the decision had to be made about a nursing home. my brother, who supposedly has 'power of attorney' is somewhere in the southern part of the state on vacation. i finally got a hold of him and explained the choices - as the hospital will be discharging dad before the brother is home from vaca.

even though the hometown nursing home is going to cost more per day, we thought it would be better to have him there where people would come visit him. i have no idea what his finances are and i do not know how this is going to be handled financially. i arranged with the director for them to pick dad up and bring him there upon his discharge.

a couple weeks prior to this, the family took his car keys and car away. a couple weeks before that he moved into a 6-plex apartment, after being in the house for 20-25 years. a couple weeks before that the doc gave him an alzheimer's test - he scored 19/26. the doc put him on aricept. this has been a very fast downward spiral for him.

i know he does not want to be in a care center. i know he cannot come down here - he's 85 and has been in the hometown his entire adult life. i know he's going to hate us if he does recover from the effects of the anesthesia and realizes his money is gone and he's in a nursing home.

please, god forgive me - and god, please be kind to him, he's my dad.