Man Down II

Saturday, September 15, 2011

A fun day was had by all in downtown Seattle... and I learnt the true meaning of "shop till you drop". At 8 pm, somewhere on the I-5 north of Seattle, I dialed dad's number, only to have it ring out to voice mail every time. Weird, but I tried not to stress about it. I'd be home around 10 or 11 that night, and since my car was parked at his place, I'd stop in to check on him before I went home.

9.30 pm - a delayed text came through. (Since I was in the US, I'd had turned my data roaming off, and was checking intermittently. Nothing came through when I last checked at 8pm.) It was a message from the case manager with the Nurse Next Door asking if I had heard from dad, as the 4pm nurse had been unable to get in. Uh oh. Now I KNEW something was wrong.

Several panicked phone calls later, it was determined that the Nurse Next Door manager would go over to dad's and report back to me.

"I'm with Norman, and he has had a fall."

My stomach dropped. I just knew there was something wrong. What's worse, he'd been there for hours.

By this time, we were south of Bellingham somewhere, so still had to drive to the border and wait in line. (We also knew we'd be paying some taxes at Customs due to quantity of goods purchased!) Another side note: we pulled into a rest stop so I could get something out of my suitcase in the trunk... and for some bizarre reason, there were fireworks going off near by. As my friend put it... nothing like adding to the drama!

11 pm... arrived at dad's place (bank accounts lighter still from HST paid on goods crossing the border!) The NND case manager was waiting, and said dad was in bed. He'd found him on the floor of the living room (thankfully carpeted)... it appeared that he'd just fallen out of the chair... maybe he'd gotten his feet tangled in the footstool. He'd cleaned dad up, gave him food and drink, walked him around the living room to wear off adreneline and put him to bed. At that point, there was a rustle in the bedroom and I looked in to find dad out of bed, at his walker, with his cane upside down, doing something at the bottom of the walker.

"Hi dad. I'm back from Seattle. What are you doing?"

"Filling up with gas."

"Well, you don't need to fill up with gas now. You need to get into bed and rest."
At this point, I stuck my head out the door and repeated to the others that dad was filling up with gas. Haha... unbeknownst to me at that moment, they looked at each other and thought that dad himself was filling up with another kind of gas. Hahaha.

We got dad into bed, and stayed around for a while, talking. It was determined that he was ok for the time being. I would go home, get some much needed rest (was exhausted from the week of stress, not to mention a non-stop shopping trip) and would come back in the morning to give dad his 8 am pill and see how he was doing...

And YES... the man had once again removed his Lifeline button... his "Help I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up" button. There are no words for what I felt... no words.