“Oh my word, you sounded just like Grandpa,” my daughter Sharon laughed. “He always was wanted a hamburger and you just asked Dad to get you a junior Whopper.”
Me? like my dad whose physical and mental health declined until he needed full time care?! Me? like my dad, a ‘grumpy old man’?
Could I be a grumpy old lady? I did get fed up with the “no choice” hospital trays. I didn’t want another splendid meal of chicken and fixins’. I wanted lemonade and lettuce - just like my dad who went to the hospital for a diagnostic procedure. That hospital offered him a list of options for the next day’s meals. He crossed them all off and wrote “lemonade, lettuce sandwich.”
Now that caught the dietitian’s attention.
The 10th day after surgery to pin together my broken bones, I looked at the breakfast tray and my brain screamed like a spoiled child, “I just want to go home and fix what I want, thank you very much.”
Everyone else at the table dug into their biscuit, eggs, bacon, orange juice and cereal. After nine days of essentially the same breakfast, I shoved it all aside, poured milk over the bowl of raisin bran and sulkily ate it. I didn’t even have the option to cross off all the options.
By the third day of physical therapy, I knew why the smiling therapist approached me and greeted him, “What are we going to do today?”
He stepped back, startled at my abruptness. I wasn’t upset, just ready to get on with the work of getting better and belatedly remembered my manners, “I mean, hi. How are you today?”
He had me use place my broken arm in the arm rest of the walker and practice hopping across the room with my good leg. Images of my father struggling to move with two feet using a walker flashed before me. Dad tolerated the aluminum metal frame he needed it for balance as do I. Laying in the bed at the nursing home. he suffered the intrusions and indignities that his health forced on him as have I.
After days of being awakened at 5 a.m. for yet another blood test I had had it. I have willingly donated blood for years, but I grew to dread the hospital’s daily ritual and the changing faces and skills of the phlebotomists promising, “this is just a stick.”
Barely containing my grumpiness, I rubbed my sore arm and asked the doctor, “Do I have to have the blood test every day?”
“I’ll check.”
He came back, “that order was leftover from your surgery. No more blood tests.”
When another physician wanted to check something with a blood test or use another less invasive method, I made it quite clear I would not willingly suffer any pain I could avoid.
Just like Dad. He had a chance to go to England for a Parkinson’s Disease twin study. His identical twin had Parkinson’s. Dad did not. He declined the free trip. He did not want it at the price of unknown medical tests and samplings of his body.
I really heard my father’s voice and frustration on my last Saturday in the rehab unit. Most of the staff of therapists have the weekend off. I was told I would have 90 minutes of therapy on Sunday and nothing on Saturday.
Nothing?! Just sit all day, watch TV and eat? The grumpy old lady had had it, “I am going to leave. I will call my husband to come take me to my daughter’s house to wait for the staples to be removed from my leg.”
Echoes of all the times in the nursing home when my dad said, “I want to go home. It won’t take but 15 minutes to pack this all up and we can go.” He was right. He had little to pack, but home was 1,400 miles away and he needed round the clock care. He could not walk, could barely get in and out of a car and needed assistance with everything except eating and changing the TV channel.
We changed the subject a lot when visiting him.
No one changed the subject. It took longer than 15 minutes. My husband had a list of errands and tasks for the day. The nurse needed to get my prescriptions. I resigned myself to waiting, turned on the television and watched a couple reruns of Law and Order as I went through all my exercises.
In time, the nurse came with prescriptions and instructions. My husband came just as an aide arrived with plastic bags and tape to show him how to seal my casts in plastic before a shower. That had been the only new skill planned for Monday’s therapy.
By the time the dinner bell rang, I had clean, dry hair and an empty room.
In the dining room my husband happily accepted a final guest tray filled with his favorite foods.
Refreshed, replenished and ready, I rolled down the hall with an escort of nurses to our sedan. I slid backwards into the rear seat, arranged pillows around me and sighed happily. I was on my way to fixing what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to eat it – even if was just a hamburger from the king.