It can now be revealed.
June 22, 2005Now that my father is safely returned to the homestead, being lovingly tended to by his devoted family, I can make fun of him.
But first, a word or two for those of you who might soon have a parent in the hospital. If your parent is over 65, no matter how vigorous or youthful they may appear, they will be described by the hospital staff as “elderly.” You may scoff at this. My parent is not some addled 90-year-old gumming his tapioca pudding! you may say to the doctors, as I did, and they will smile indulgently at you and continue to refer to your vigorous youthful parent as Elderly. Breathe and let it go. Whoooosh. There!
Okay, so the “elderly”—well, they’re a colorful bunch. Apparently they are prone to developing something called ICU delirium. Which means that the blinky-blinkiness of the lights and the constant beeping of the monitors and the nurses prodding them 24/7 seriously messes with their sleep/waking cycles, and they go (and I’m going to use a technical term here), completely fucking nuts. Now, I’m telling you this because when my father began to behave, ahem, colorfully!, our doctors did not clue us into this. They didn’t explain that this happens all the time. They cheerfully referred to my father as “psychotic” and when we asked, “But why, doctors? Why?” they shrugged and said, damned if we know! Whoops!
I don’t know what led them to do this, except some sadistic streak running through the staff of Mt. Sinai. They watched us as we scurried about, wringing our hands and knitting our brows, and they chortled darkly. Luckily I have a good friend in the medical profession (hi, Mike! Hi!) and he kindly took my 8 a.m. phone calls and explained the matter to me as if I were not, in fact, an idiot. Thanks, Mike!
At the time, when my dad had just woken up only to reveal that he was batshit insane, my mom kept prodding me to write about it in my blog. “Hey, you should write how he said [insert hilarity that could only be concocted by the insane here]! That’s some funny stuff, what he said!”
“Well, mother, I suppose, but wouldn’t that be disrespectful of our poor ailing patriarch?”
“What could he say about it? He’s so nuts, he believes that [insert witty delusion here]. Haw, haw!”
[Note: the above conversation was edited to make me sound good and my mother sound bad. Also, my mother never once said “Haw, haw” in her life. No one says that, except the heathens in Jack Chick publications. Please alert me if you have evidence to the contrary.]
[But she did want me to make fun of him. Just for the record. Because crazy people is funny.]
After a few days of wacky nuttiness, the Father regained his mental clarity, and we rejoiced. And then he said some things that made me laugh with him, and not at him. Because he is a funny man, even when sane. At one point he asked my mom to shave him. “But it looks like the nurse has been shaving you already,” my mom observed. To which my father rolled his eyes and responded, “Do you know how they shave you, here? They dump ice water over your head, and when you stop screaming, they start shaving.”
At another point, he was mocking a roommate he had suffered for a few days—a whiner who had to loudly regale anyone in his presence with the details of his aches and pains. I guess over the course of a day or two, the whiner had also revealed himself to be an idiot. And my father said, “It boggles the mind, how such a person can be smart enough to live. How does he have the mental capacity to get through the day? To simply leave the house and find a sandwich?”
I am glad you're no longer with the idiots, Dad. Or at least, now you're with the idiots you know.
Reader Comments (54)
I'm glad your dad is better and is away from the sandwich finding idiots. Making fun of family is fun!
I'm so glad to hear that he's getting better and that he's not trapped with the nutcases anymore!
It was like she was bogarting the mushrooms.
Strange, but 65 just doesn't seem that old to me.
My Dad is 61 and still playing competitive squash. Though, I believe he would keel over if he heard someone refer to him as elderly.
So glad to hear yours has been sprung.
Your father sounds so much like my father. My dad had such a great sense of humor. It was dry and full of wit.
Thanks for making me smile as I remembered him today!
Hm! I am pretty sure my grandmother also had some in-hospital delusions where she was convinced we were in Holland. How odd. Also she kept asking us to shut nonexistent windows in her room, until finally my mother just began complying and making window-shutting motions at random in the air.
Hardy Har Har... or Haw, Haw as we say here in the South.
sinai stinks. and it was dirty to boot. wishing a good recovery for your dad.
they wake you at all and anytime in the hospital. when i was on bed "rest", i was dying to get home to recover from resting.
Of course, I can say that about the world. So maybe the best we can hope for is to have people laugh with us and not at us.
But I am so glad your father is better now.
Glad to hear your dad has improved to where he can crack jokes about morons unable to find their own food.
My grandmother used to live in a community in Florida that had a winding lagoon on the property. It is a standing order from my father that if he ever goes loony, I am to return to Florida and push him in the lagoon. So it's good to know the ICU thing is temporary... I'd had to push him in the lagoon before he was ready.