+387 days: Dad, pneumonia, and the ER

I went to visit my parents today; dad was in bad shape. He couldn't get out of bed, had been sleeping/resting all day. By the time I got there, things had rapidly worsened. Mom had called his doctors, who all advised (a) that previous testing suggested that he might have pneumonia (b) that he should go to the ER if he was struggling and couldn't breath.

But he was in a state. He didn't want to go to the ER, and he didn't want to get an ambulance. Mom was making more calls, dad's panic was rising. Mom suggested wheelchair service (to the ER?). Dad, in full panic, scribbling on his notepad:

I AM DYING

Mom rushed in and asked if she could call an ambulance. Dad nodded. I called 911 and told them that we needed an ambulance and where we were. I was … what was I? I was very VERY worried. Dad was in full panic. He had me bring him all his clothes and help dress him. The whole apartment was in panic: I was looking frantically out of the windows (a) to try to calm myself (b) to see if I could spot the ambulance. Mom is racing around the house trying to find all the medical insurance cards

IS THIS IT? IS MY FATHER LEAVING THE APARTMENT FOR THE LAST TIME?

Finally, I spotted an ambulance coming in our direction. It turned the corner and stopped outside the apartment. "The ambulance is here" I said to dad. I met the EMTs at the front door. They came in and examined dad. It felt good and reassuring that they were with us. Mom calmed down and gathered his insurance cards and other paperwork. As for me, honestly, I think I was calmer now that my parents weren't in charge of what to do next. The EMTs finished dressing him, pulled him up to a sitting position, and laid him on a stretcher. Wheeled him to the elevator (there wasn't enough space for me. I caught the next elevator down).

When I got down, they were just preparing to raise the stretcher so that they could slide him into the ambulance. They got him in, and started securing him inside. "Are you going too?" They asked me "Yes absolutely" I said. They directed mom to a side door where they'd set out a small foot stool to help her get in. Mom wasn't having any of it. She clambered right in through the back, and the EMTs help to buckle us in.

"I don't think I've ever been in an ambulance" mom observed. "I have definitely been in an ambulance" I told her, "and I think you have too - when you had your anaphylactic reaction to cold?" "Yes yes true enough" she replied. She was taking a lot of interest in the equipment laid out around us. I think she does this as a coping mechanism. Inside my head I was making up all kinds of scenarios out what could happen when we got to the ER, and if there was anything vital that I should have in the front of my mind.

We arrived at the ER. It turns out this facility is/was a free-standing ER with no hospital attached to it. They got him in to see the doctors right away. The doctor's did the usual stuff: IV line, Stethoscope for breathing. Took blood. Took an x-ray of his chest. Diagnosis of pneumonia was confirmed (though later, oddly, this diagnosis turned out to be incorrect) he was put on IV antibiotics. There was a question of which hospital to transfer to: Columbia, where his doctors are, or Lenox, where the ER had a relationship, and where they knew that they could get a bed for him. Eventually, we decided on Lenox. Mom and dad got another ambulance to transfer them, and I got a sandwich and went home.

How I feel / felt

Heavy, very heavy. To come home and get the report that dad couldn't get out of bed all day, to see him so unwell. The hardest thing from me has been communicating with him. He scribbles his fear out on his pad. When he wrote: "I am dying", and mom still was looking for the number for the wheel chair service, I felt panic and hopelessness.

But on reflection, I think it would have been even harder if I hadn't been there. So much harder to hear the news that dad needed to be rushed to the ER and then to the hospital, than being there in person. So in that sense, I guess I was lucky?

-- update --

Can we cut through this shirt?

I am just now remembering how in the ER, they asked this. Otherwise, they'd have to take off his breathing mask to get the under-shirt off. I immediately said "Yes", and mom concurred.

Now that I've remembered this, it is bringing up thoughts and emotions in me I didn't know were there.

One of my strongest childhood memories of dad (Sophi's too) is dad roaming around the house in his tighty-whitey's. It wasn't rare for him to have on a white undershirt too. These undershirts were typically deeply sweat and errant food scrap stained. The undershirt is/was a testament to how he lived life actively, with a little bit of sloppiness and hedonism mixed in.

Now I am realizing that my feelings of seeing his undershirt cut off is like seeing the past sheered away from him. The man he was, to the sick man he is now. One more veneer of constant strength in life gone. One sweat-stained undershirt removed. One man's life almost over.