Facile Friday - Klingons and Karate Men

I missed last Friday's post but time was moving very slowly, a kind of twilight zone environment was where I was hanging out for the last week.



On Thursday I got a call at work from my father, he was calling to tell me about some strange things that were happening to him.  During our conversation I heard odd word substitutions that were not a normal part of my dad's communication.  My dad appeared to have had or be having a stroke.

"If you can't speak correctly, that is your brain and you need to go to the emergency room."

Off they went, my mom and dad, to find out what was up with dad and his speech issue.  I left work and met them at the ER, where my father was hanging on to the one really impressive word that he could remember without a problem..."Hydrochlorothiazide".  I swear!  My dad could read but was unable to make the words come out of his mouth.  We had him read the Welcome to the ER sign and all that came out when he tried to speak was gibberish.  Well, gibberish and hydrochlorothiazide. The next few days was really a blur for me, I can't imagine that it was better for my dad, and we heard the ongoing updates of what had happened, what was happening now and what would happen next.

It is weird to see your parent in that kind of situation.  All of the "what ifs" that your brain conjures up can keep you up at night and I did my fair share of tossing and turning.  My family may or may not be unique in how we handle adversity but we have a tendency to laugh our way through these kinds of situations.  My father was fairly compromised in his speech at various points, so there was lots of charades and the suggestion that he just tell people that he was brushing up on his Klingon.  The standard greetings and farewells turned into a tribute to dad's new found language.  "Voitsha poppy!  Love ya.  Have a girdmat night."  My dad's room appeared to be a favorite of the nursing staff.  One nurse mentioned that it was so different from the rest of the floor that we were on, we had lights on and there was laughter flowing out of the room.  All this laughter and humor did not negate the fact that dad was a little bit trapped in his own head since his mouth wouldn't cooperate.  The amazing thiing is that once dad got his computer, he was able to launch into the language that he spoke most often, the language of computer programming.  Makes me chuckle with amazement every time I think about it.  He couldn't complete a simple sentence verbally but he could dump huge amounts of complex computer code into a program to allow it to do various complex tasks.  Now THAT is amazing!

My 8 year old son had his first real encounter with a situation like this.  I took him to see my dad and tried to let him know what he would see and hear when we went into the hospital room.  He slunk in, peeking around the corner just in case there was something yucky to see.  Once in the door, Max did really well.  He just did what he does and was very comfortable with the whole thing.  Max and I made a special token for my dad (aka Boompy) to keep with him, a little clothes pin karate man, and dad made sure that it stayed close by.

My dad spent a few days in the hospital while he waited for his impending arteriole endarterectomy.  He charmed the staff with his great attitude and got more orange sherbet than any man should have a right to.  My family does the humor thing really well and I truly believe that when they rolled my father in to surgery to slice open his carotid artery, his reliance on humor was one of the things that helped him recover so well and so quickly.  Surgery on Monday, home on Wednesday.

Now my dad is home and giddy to be there I am sure.  All in all, he had a miraculous recovery with very minimal deficit in his speech, nothing that a little speech therapy can't resolve.  Yea Poppy!!  I have a feeling that this episode in our family's history will be recalled fondly with the mention of orange sherbet, Klingons, little karate men and laughter in a hospital room.

Love Ya Poppy!

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