The phrase The Golden Years is heard less often nowadays, but when I was younger I remember hearing about those years to look forward too with desire as the leisure lifestyle of being retired.
For many, in actuality, I think those Golden years are the ones you have while younger and generally in good health with those years set aside as supposedly the Golden ones more often than not problematic with health issues. Like right now for us but not us personally!
Fred Davis, was the closest person to a father I had in my early teen years as well as a person I kept in contact with until his unexpected death several years ago. As he aged himself he often stated "the golden years? what's golden about them?". He very often said he suffered from only one thing, "A...G.....E..."
He lived to his 90s and while mentally still sharp his health was far from good with bypass surgeries and loss of leg function and numbness that meant walkers and problems just standing or getting around.
Stacy and I are getting older, so far a few aches and occasional pains here and there but nothing as many as over the decades people we've known have had to deal with and suffer through as they age. So far we've been pretty lucky and I certainly hope that will continue. Yes some serious stuff with Stacy's thyroid removal in 2006 and my middle ear out of whack in 2013, but overall pretty good.
But starting on March 12th, 2015, Stacy and I have had to deal with the age issue full force with Stacy's father.
Stacy was out of town on a state trip to Boise and it had been set up to surprise him as a belated birthday present with the next day, Friday the 13th, as not only was Stacy coming back home but also our oldest daughter, his granddaughter, Sandy with her two girls, our granddaughters and his great granddaughters, were to visit for a week as his 93rd birthday had been on March 3rd. It had all been set and would have been a surprise as Stacy was to arrive before Sandy and then bring them back home with her.
Except, he had been suffering from what we all believed to be a slight relapse of a cold he'd been getting over from a couple of weeks before. He had a bad cough again and didn't feel good but nothing seemed out of the ordinary, even to him.
Since Stacy was gone and I was at work everyday, Stacy's older brother, Scott, had decided to visit and stay with the father during the day that Thursday.
Before I went to work that morning I talked with Selby and reminded him that Scott would be by at some point and told him to text me if he needed anything from the store and I'd go by before coming back home. He was acting perfectly normal for him, although obviously not feeling well, and said OK.
As I have security cameras all around the property I watched for Scott's arrival so I'd be able to let Stacy know later in the day when she'd call, and saw he'd gotten there a little after 10 am, the usual time he gets there for "first thing in the morning". Scott was there for about an hour then left. I'd thought that would be that, but about an hour and a half later he'd returned.
I'd gotten busy so didn't keep up on the goings on at home. About 1:20 pm I heard the local Ambulance going out on a call as the "ambulance barn" is near where I work, and turned on the scanner to hear what was up and where it was going.
I didn't hear anything on the scanner but then Stacy called me and said Scott's wife Cheri, had called her in Boise saying she had called "911" because Scott had called her to come over to our house since Scott thought something was "wrong" with Selby.
Instead of calling "911" himself he had called Cheri and waited the 30 to 40 minutes for her to arrive at which time she immediately called for an Ambulance telling Stacy her father was "unresponsive and semi-conscious".
After talking with Stacy I called Cheri myself, she hadn't called me because she didn't have my cell number at the time, and she told me the same she'd told Stacy and that since the EMT's were there they'd follow him to the Emergency Room and keep me informed on what was happening.
A much involved long story shortened, Stacy's father would have died that day had Scott not come back by the house, something he normally doesn't do, its most often 'once is enough' on his visits. But, in the time between noticing there was a problem, calling Cheri and the wait for her getting there and then another wait for an Ambulance crew arriving, there had been a very near death event happen to him. Lack of oxygen? The Doctor said it was a good possibility but in conjunction with some other things like an unknown allergy to the antibiotics he'd been given for his cold/cough.
Selby wound up in the hospital for 8 days total. He was transferred to the regional Hospital in Coeur D' Alene, because as we were told, he was having problems with irregular heart beats, as well as overall issues getting him stable in our local area hospital. He was down in CDA for 3 days.
As we had been told he probably would not survive the next few days, all our kids were contacted and basically dropped everything and made their way to North Idaho, just in case.
Again, this whole thing started on Thursday the 12th and by Monday the 16th, all 3 kids and respective grandkids had made it here. We'd gotten motel rooms in CDA to be nearby in case of another problem and everyone was making twice daily visits to the hospital to check in on him.
He had major memory problems immediately, not recognizing people or remembering very much about what his life had been like prior to the day of the incident or even remembering that day.
After 3 days at regional hospital in CDA he was transferred back to our local hospital for continued care. Ultimately we kept getting told he was having so many problems he may need to be sent to a elder care facility, we were told he would be on oxygen due to blood oxygen levels being low, and he'd need to use a walker to get around due to mobility issues, and that was IF he got that much better and could be sent home. Last we were told on Thursday the 19th that the following Sunday, the 22nd, he should be OK enough to send home, but on oxygen.
That Friday, the 20th, the kids had to start returning to their respective homes due to school and jobs. I, with Sean and his wife Brandy were taking daughter Laura and her son Tyler back to the Spokane airport. We'd had to leave around 6 am to get Laura back to the airport in time for check in etc. I was part way there when Stacy called me to say she'd gotten a call from the hospital that Selby was getting sent home that day, Friday! We were not expecting the early release after everything the nurses kept relaying from the care doctors.
After we'd gotten back home that afternoon, Stacy and Sandy brought him back from the hospital, no oxygen, no recommendations, no doctor's orders for anything! Just kicked out and sent home!
He was very weak and unsteady, barely able to walk or make it up the stairs to get into the house. He was very confused about what everyday things were. after he'd gotten settled the remaining kids visited with him as they could but his confusion caused problems in even trying to interact with him.
As both Sandy and her kids and Sean and his wife had to be taken to Spokane on Saturday the 21st, it was arranged to have Scott and Cheri come get Selby and take him to their home until the next day, the 22nd, since no one felt he should be alone at all with his mental condition and Stacy and I wouldn't be back until late that evening. Scott came by about 9:30 to pick him up and didn't seem to notice that Selby didn't have any idea he was going anywhere or with him.
But finally go he did and we took the kids to Spokane for goodbye's and their flights to their home cities. Sandy and her kids left at 6 pm that evening. Sean and Brandy's Sunday morning flight was for around 6 a.m. so we had gotten them a room at an airport hotel to make getting to the flight easier and got ourselves back home a little after 10 p.m..
Since Sean and Brandy had to get up around 3:30 a.m. to make their check in and flight from 4 am on, son Sean was texting us, waking us up every few minutes because he was feeling sad about going back to Hawaii. His very early flight was to Salt Lake City to catch a flight direct to Hawaii from there. A long flight!
About 8:30 a.m., Scott brought Selby back because he had been making a lot of noise to wake them up because he didn't want to be at their house anymore.
Stacy and I found out a day later that in his mind, Selby had somehow concocted that his near death experience was all a plan of Scott's! And he didn't want to be near him for fear Scott was going to do something to him.
In the two weeks he's been back, while he has physically gotten somewhat stronger, his mental state is still far from what it was a month ago. We actually never know what he'll want to know when we get home. Sometimes it's the question, "what day is it?" then occasionally, like on Monday after work, we got home and he was telling Stacy that he was stuck to his chair and couldn't get up because of his belt. He apparently felt his belt was tying him to the chair and he sat there, in his mind stuck. Stacy undid his belt and pulled it off then showed him that he was holding the chair remote in his hand and that he controlled the chair and could recline it or lift him up, and he was surprised and had forgotten how to make it work. He also can no longer comprehend some simple things he used to do like turn on the TV or turn it off if it's on, play his audio books in their player, understand some written things. If he will eat at all, foods he used to enjoy he now doesn't remember eating and gets upset that we'd try to feed him that food.
His life is becoming the way he never wanted it to be when he used to talk about the future he didn't want to experience and he doesn't understand or comprehend many of his minimal activities that he used to deal with.
All this has become incredibly stressful for Stacy. Caring for him has been stressful since we moved here just over 9 years ago and has only gotten more involved and difficult as he's gotten older. And to be honest, he did not expect to live to his 90s, as we often heard about his family dying young. He's outlived everyone he knew from his era.
Our house is not constructed as 'elderly friendly' which since he has lived to be his age, makes it difficult for him with numerous stairs, doors, and primary wood heat which he can no longer utilize due to the effort and weight involved with keeping the woodstove going during a day.
Stacy, and me too as I do help, now have to take care of most everything he does other than all the hours a day he's now sleeping, which has greatly increased since his event. Stacy has gone from a caring daughter trying to make his last few years easy on him to his caregiver taking almost full care of him. While he gets upset about talking with him of having a twice a week check by a home nurse, if he continues as he has been, it will be almost a certainty to have one coming in as Stacy going home daily to check on him and give him lunch is taking a toll on her and she'll need the break plus her trips to Boise at times over the summer.
My birth mother, when I was younger used to talk about a "Viking Funeral" of being set adrift on a raft out on the ocean as her preferred way to go. Well it didn't happen that way, she paid for her years of cigarette smoking by developing COPD the last decades of her life and when she died in 2008, she removed herself from life support and suffocated to death.
Fred Davis, mentioned above, I was told had just gotten up and was walking to his bathroom and dropped dead. He was certain his wife Dorothy would leave before himself due to her failing health so had no plan when he died first.
Stacy and I feel pretty certain that Selby's time had come that Thursday and he dodged it with Scott and Cheri's intervention. Now that he's having all the memory and comprehension issues, while yes he's alive, is he happy anymore? Only time will tell.
For many, in actuality, I think those Golden years are the ones you have while younger and generally in good health with those years set aside as supposedly the Golden ones more often than not problematic with health issues. Like right now for us but not us personally!
Fred Davis, was the closest person to a father I had in my early teen years as well as a person I kept in contact with until his unexpected death several years ago. As he aged himself he often stated "the golden years? what's golden about them?". He very often said he suffered from only one thing, "A...G.....E..."
He lived to his 90s and while mentally still sharp his health was far from good with bypass surgeries and loss of leg function and numbness that meant walkers and problems just standing or getting around.
Stacy and I are getting older, so far a few aches and occasional pains here and there but nothing as many as over the decades people we've known have had to deal with and suffer through as they age. So far we've been pretty lucky and I certainly hope that will continue. Yes some serious stuff with Stacy's thyroid removal in 2006 and my middle ear out of whack in 2013, but overall pretty good.
But starting on March 12th, 2015, Stacy and I have had to deal with the age issue full force with Stacy's father.
Stacy was out of town on a state trip to Boise and it had been set up to surprise him as a belated birthday present with the next day, Friday the 13th, as not only was Stacy coming back home but also our oldest daughter, his granddaughter, Sandy with her two girls, our granddaughters and his great granddaughters, were to visit for a week as his 93rd birthday had been on March 3rd. It had all been set and would have been a surprise as Stacy was to arrive before Sandy and then bring them back home with her.
Except, he had been suffering from what we all believed to be a slight relapse of a cold he'd been getting over from a couple of weeks before. He had a bad cough again and didn't feel good but nothing seemed out of the ordinary, even to him.
Since Stacy was gone and I was at work everyday, Stacy's older brother, Scott, had decided to visit and stay with the father during the day that Thursday.
Before I went to work that morning I talked with Selby and reminded him that Scott would be by at some point and told him to text me if he needed anything from the store and I'd go by before coming back home. He was acting perfectly normal for him, although obviously not feeling well, and said OK.
As I have security cameras all around the property I watched for Scott's arrival so I'd be able to let Stacy know later in the day when she'd call, and saw he'd gotten there a little after 10 am, the usual time he gets there for "first thing in the morning". Scott was there for about an hour then left. I'd thought that would be that, but about an hour and a half later he'd returned.
I'd gotten busy so didn't keep up on the goings on at home. About 1:20 pm I heard the local Ambulance going out on a call as the "ambulance barn" is near where I work, and turned on the scanner to hear what was up and where it was going.
I didn't hear anything on the scanner but then Stacy called me and said Scott's wife Cheri, had called her in Boise saying she had called "911" because Scott had called her to come over to our house since Scott thought something was "wrong" with Selby.
Instead of calling "911" himself he had called Cheri and waited the 30 to 40 minutes for her to arrive at which time she immediately called for an Ambulance telling Stacy her father was "unresponsive and semi-conscious".
After talking with Stacy I called Cheri myself, she hadn't called me because she didn't have my cell number at the time, and she told me the same she'd told Stacy and that since the EMT's were there they'd follow him to the Emergency Room and keep me informed on what was happening.
A much involved long story shortened, Stacy's father would have died that day had Scott not come back by the house, something he normally doesn't do, its most often 'once is enough' on his visits. But, in the time between noticing there was a problem, calling Cheri and the wait for her getting there and then another wait for an Ambulance crew arriving, there had been a very near death event happen to him. Lack of oxygen? The Doctor said it was a good possibility but in conjunction with some other things like an unknown allergy to the antibiotics he'd been given for his cold/cough.
Selby wound up in the hospital for 8 days total. He was transferred to the regional Hospital in Coeur D' Alene, because as we were told, he was having problems with irregular heart beats, as well as overall issues getting him stable in our local area hospital. He was down in CDA for 3 days.
As we had been told he probably would not survive the next few days, all our kids were contacted and basically dropped everything and made their way to North Idaho, just in case.
Again, this whole thing started on Thursday the 12th and by Monday the 16th, all 3 kids and respective grandkids had made it here. We'd gotten motel rooms in CDA to be nearby in case of another problem and everyone was making twice daily visits to the hospital to check in on him.
He had major memory problems immediately, not recognizing people or remembering very much about what his life had been like prior to the day of the incident or even remembering that day.
After 3 days at regional hospital in CDA he was transferred back to our local hospital for continued care. Ultimately we kept getting told he was having so many problems he may need to be sent to a elder care facility, we were told he would be on oxygen due to blood oxygen levels being low, and he'd need to use a walker to get around due to mobility issues, and that was IF he got that much better and could be sent home. Last we were told on Thursday the 19th that the following Sunday, the 22nd, he should be OK enough to send home, but on oxygen.
That Friday, the 20th, the kids had to start returning to their respective homes due to school and jobs. I, with Sean and his wife Brandy were taking daughter Laura and her son Tyler back to the Spokane airport. We'd had to leave around 6 am to get Laura back to the airport in time for check in etc. I was part way there when Stacy called me to say she'd gotten a call from the hospital that Selby was getting sent home that day, Friday! We were not expecting the early release after everything the nurses kept relaying from the care doctors.
After we'd gotten back home that afternoon, Stacy and Sandy brought him back from the hospital, no oxygen, no recommendations, no doctor's orders for anything! Just kicked out and sent home!
He was very weak and unsteady, barely able to walk or make it up the stairs to get into the house. He was very confused about what everyday things were. after he'd gotten settled the remaining kids visited with him as they could but his confusion caused problems in even trying to interact with him.
As both Sandy and her kids and Sean and his wife had to be taken to Spokane on Saturday the 21st, it was arranged to have Scott and Cheri come get Selby and take him to their home until the next day, the 22nd, since no one felt he should be alone at all with his mental condition and Stacy and I wouldn't be back until late that evening. Scott came by about 9:30 to pick him up and didn't seem to notice that Selby didn't have any idea he was going anywhere or with him.
But finally go he did and we took the kids to Spokane for goodbye's and their flights to their home cities. Sandy and her kids left at 6 pm that evening. Sean and Brandy's Sunday morning flight was for around 6 a.m. so we had gotten them a room at an airport hotel to make getting to the flight easier and got ourselves back home a little after 10 p.m..
Since Sean and Brandy had to get up around 3:30 a.m. to make their check in and flight from 4 am on, son Sean was texting us, waking us up every few minutes because he was feeling sad about going back to Hawaii. His very early flight was to Salt Lake City to catch a flight direct to Hawaii from there. A long flight!
About 8:30 a.m., Scott brought Selby back because he had been making a lot of noise to wake them up because he didn't want to be at their house anymore.
Stacy and I found out a day later that in his mind, Selby had somehow concocted that his near death experience was all a plan of Scott's! And he didn't want to be near him for fear Scott was going to do something to him.
In the two weeks he's been back, while he has physically gotten somewhat stronger, his mental state is still far from what it was a month ago. We actually never know what he'll want to know when we get home. Sometimes it's the question, "what day is it?" then occasionally, like on Monday after work, we got home and he was telling Stacy that he was stuck to his chair and couldn't get up because of his belt. He apparently felt his belt was tying him to the chair and he sat there, in his mind stuck. Stacy undid his belt and pulled it off then showed him that he was holding the chair remote in his hand and that he controlled the chair and could recline it or lift him up, and he was surprised and had forgotten how to make it work. He also can no longer comprehend some simple things he used to do like turn on the TV or turn it off if it's on, play his audio books in their player, understand some written things. If he will eat at all, foods he used to enjoy he now doesn't remember eating and gets upset that we'd try to feed him that food.
His life is becoming the way he never wanted it to be when he used to talk about the future he didn't want to experience and he doesn't understand or comprehend many of his minimal activities that he used to deal with.
All this has become incredibly stressful for Stacy. Caring for him has been stressful since we moved here just over 9 years ago and has only gotten more involved and difficult as he's gotten older. And to be honest, he did not expect to live to his 90s, as we often heard about his family dying young. He's outlived everyone he knew from his era.
Our house is not constructed as 'elderly friendly' which since he has lived to be his age, makes it difficult for him with numerous stairs, doors, and primary wood heat which he can no longer utilize due to the effort and weight involved with keeping the woodstove going during a day.
Stacy, and me too as I do help, now have to take care of most everything he does other than all the hours a day he's now sleeping, which has greatly increased since his event. Stacy has gone from a caring daughter trying to make his last few years easy on him to his caregiver taking almost full care of him. While he gets upset about talking with him of having a twice a week check by a home nurse, if he continues as he has been, it will be almost a certainty to have one coming in as Stacy going home daily to check on him and give him lunch is taking a toll on her and she'll need the break plus her trips to Boise at times over the summer.
My birth mother, when I was younger used to talk about a "Viking Funeral" of being set adrift on a raft out on the ocean as her preferred way to go. Well it didn't happen that way, she paid for her years of cigarette smoking by developing COPD the last decades of her life and when she died in 2008, she removed herself from life support and suffocated to death.
Fred Davis, mentioned above, I was told had just gotten up and was walking to his bathroom and dropped dead. He was certain his wife Dorothy would leave before himself due to her failing health so had no plan when he died first.
Stacy and I feel pretty certain that Selby's time had come that Thursday and he dodged it with Scott and Cheri's intervention. Now that he's having all the memory and comprehension issues, while yes he's alive, is he happy anymore? Only time will tell.
Comments