This morning I had a call from my father's doctor. He is a young intern, very bright and perceptive, and he listens carefully. He said my father had a small heart attack last night, as he did when he was in the hospital last year. The doctors were very concerned about his high blood pressure and wanted to raise his level of blood pressure medication, but I warned them that when that had been done during other hospital stays, it had ended up almost killing him. They tried to find ways around it, but it comes down to the fact that either we let the blood pressure rise and give him a heart attack or stroke or we risk the medication killing him. Rock and hard place.
Then I talked to my dad and he got hysterical, telling me to come and to bring a lawyer or even the FBI. He claimed the doctors there were ignoring his pleas not to hurt him, and that he knew exactly what time all this happened, etc. I tried to calm him down, and told him, quite reasonably, that I could not bring any lawyer--never mind the FBI--to the hospital. So I had his brother call him, and asked my cousin in Jersey to call too, and to help calm him down.
When I came, I put his glasses on him, gave him a newspaper, held his hand for a few minutes and let him talk, and asked if he wanted his hearing aid. I spoke with all his doctors, and discerned truth from fact as best I could. I think being deaf and scared and being transferred to the cardiac unit in the middle of the night was pretty alarming. I also think there's more than a little of that hospital psychosis thing again. THat has happened to him before.
It's hard enough without that.
2 comments:
I am so sorry. I know well how very hard these episodes are as you try to calm down your father.
Yes. It's very tough. But he did calm down.
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