July 14, 2008

• The Second Weekend in July

  

  “Joel, you’re so emacitated you not only look like a skeleton, your head is beginning to resemble a skull. Heck, if it were Hallowe’en, you wouldn’t even need a costume to scare the kids who come trick or treating!” I attempted to make a cheap joke regarding the appearance of my roommate, which seemed to be deteriorating very quickly.

  Joel wasn’t really listening. The pain which had receded somewhat earlier in the week, after he had been released from the hospital, was back with a vengeance. However he was thinking of his brother’s visit the next day, to help get his 2006 Accord running again.

  “My brother is coming over tomorrow,” he meekly replied.

  While interred in the hospital the previous weekend, Joel told me that his brother had accepted hospice duty, when that time would arrive. I’d been questioning him whether his brother had seen him since his condition had worsened. “Are you going to go over to stay with Dale ‘for a while’?” I asked. Presently, we tend to use the phrase “for a while” when actually alluding to the last days of Joel’s life.

  “No, Dale’s coming over to help me get the car started, to get it up to the dealership for repairs.”

  “Oh, okay. I guess I’ll see you when I get home from work tomorrow.”

  Joel had been home since Monday, and it was now Thursday evening. He seemed a bit more ‘healthy’ if that word can even be used, than he was the previous week, when his liver had stopped secreting bile, and he had to go in to Emergency. That stay lasted a week. When the hospital did all it could do, he had been released. I had been tellling folks at work that I thought Joel was perilously near the end, and he was incredibly weak. He needed me to help him open jars of Gatorade, and to feed the cats, because he was too weak to pull the pop top on the cat food cans.

  As I prepared for bed Thursday night, Joel was sitting in front of the big screen TV in the living room. He was vomiting sporadically , but he was sitting up. At 3am Friday morning, when I got up to shower and shave, I saw him with his head in his hands, moaning a bit. I think I asked if he was okay, to which he begrudgingly answered that he was. I’d been careful to keep checking up on him when we were both awake, but he was up and down all through the night, and when I went to work at 5am, he was back in his bedroom.

  At work, most everyone I spoke to about Joel acknowledged that it was probably time for him to go to a hospice. I mentioned that his brother would be visiting him that day. Dale hadn’t seen Joel since he really started getting sick, and I felt that as soon as they had their reunion, Dale would whisk Joel away to his house, for round the clock care, which I cannot give. I believe Joel was in a bit of denial, even as he asked me to feed the cats each evening. One gal at work asked me how Joel was coping while I wasn’t at home. “Does he just wait for you go get home before he eats?” she asked. “He isn’t eating” I answered. “I think he needs a nurse or something. Hopefully his brother will knock some sense into him.”

  While I was at work, 15 miles away from home, Dale drove over to our house to help his brother with the car. They got some tools out of the tool cabinet, and prepared to attack the battery, which had been draining juice even while the car was turned off. After about a half hour, Dale noticed that Joel could hardly move. At one point, Joel passed out. Dale got him in his car, and drove him to Emergency at Torrance Memorial, the hospital from which he had been released a short week earlier. He was not only malnourished, because he couldn’t eat, or even keep the liquid Ensure down, but he was dehydrated as well. If Dale had not stopped by that morning, chances are Joel would have died, and I would have found him on the floor when I got home.

  When I got home, at 3:30pm as usual, the first thing I noticed was that Joel’s car was still in the driveway. When I got in the house, I called for him, and there wasn’t an answer. I took an inventory of his rooms, and determined that he wasn’t at home. I don’t have a cell phone, but I checked the house phone for messages, and there were no new ones. I saw some tools laid out in  the kitchen. Joel’s radio played NPR softly from his bedroom. I put the tools away and worked on my computer some. At 7pm I fed the cats as usual. I figured that Joel was with his brother, and I would call over there during the weekend if neither Joel nor Dale called me first. If something were wrong, I’d get a message on our phone.

  If I have one bad habit it’s not checking the phone machine regularly. The phone is usually in the dining room, on the other side of the house from where I live. During times when Joel and I needed to be connected, like when he was in the hospital, I kept the phone in the media room with me. Saturday I woke up at around 4am, and I watched a movie. I worked some on my computer, which has been giving me problems ever since I added a new hard drive. The latest problem was the lack of sound, and I fixed this on Saturday. It was a nice day, but hot, so around noonish I went out for lunch, and stopped by Barnes and Noble, where I bought a Fodor’s Guide to Los Angeles, to help plan future photo expedtions, and also Joseph Wambaugh’s “Hollywood Station” from 2006, my first “summer read” this year. I drove to Torrance Park, and read about a hundred pages. When I got home, I expected Dale and Joel to have returned. Dale lives over 50 miles away, and with gas prices being what they are, I know most people don’t like to travel indiscriminitely, so I still had it in my head that Joel spent the night at Dales, and they would come back on Saturday to deal with the car.

  Dale left me a message on Friday night, but it was after I had checked them, and he tried again on Saturday morning. After Joel had been stabilized in Emergency on Friday, Torrance Memorial wouldn’t accept him as a patient again, since there was really nothing more for him that they could do. Dale was given the address for a transition care facility, near Little Company of Mary’s, another major Torrance hospital. Dale checked him in, and didn’t leave for home until 9pm Friday night. He returned Saturday, and while visiting, Joel told him that I hardly ever answer the phone or check messages. Dale was beginning to get concerned that I wasn’t in the loop on the latest developments.

  I neglected to check messages. I guess I just thought that nothing could be really wrong. I did listen for the phone, but I missed Dale’s call and I got Joel’s cousin Ron’s call Saturday night. I told him I believed Joel was with Dale at his house. I realized that I didn’t even have Dales’ phone number.

  Sunday morning I had planned a photo expedition to Hollywood, armed with my Fodor’s guide. I set out before 8am.  I wanted to get some shots of the Hollywood sign from as close as I could possibly get, then swing down to the Hollywood Forever Cemetary, and try to find some interesting graves, like that of Rudloph Valentino, or Johnny Ramone. Even though I’m not supposed to be hiking these days, in preparation for another hip replacement, I didn’t bring along my cane, and I was hiking through the Hollywood hills, trying to get some nice photos. I got a bit tired, because of the heat, and at noon my feet and left leg were hurting quite badly, so I headed home. Again, I fully expected to see Joel and perhaps Dale when I got back.

  Nothing had changed as I arrived home. I checked the water bowl for the cats, and I took off my shoes, then began to upload about 250 photos from my camera into the computer. I heard a knock at the screen door, and heard Dale’s voice. When I got to the door, he was standing alone. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you” he began. “Joel’s back in the hospital. I need to pick up something from Joel’s room.”

  We spent about an hour talking about his brother. Dale is ready to take Joel home to hospice at his place, as soon as he is stablized enough to move out of the transition care facility. The hospital cannot do anything more for him, but he needs full time nursing care. Neither my roommate nor his family has ever been organized, and they take things as they happen, learning as they go. Undoubtedly Joel was supposed to see a hospice representative during the week, but the meeting didn’t take place. Dale expects to finalize the details and move Joel out of the transition care facility as soon as possible. I felt ashamed that I had not checked my messages for nearly two days , but Dale told me Joel had told him I was neglectful of such things. Dale found the pink slip for Joel’s car, which is what he was looking for, and he left to go back to check on Joel. I got dressed to go out, caught some lunch at Norms, and then drove over to the transition care facility to visit Joel. We spent about an hour together before a nurse came by to give him a pain shot which incapacitated him for the rest of the evening.

  As soon as I get off work today, I’m going to visit him again at the care facility, if he’s still there. I have Dale’s cell phone number, and will be keeping in contact with him over the next few days. The plans are for Joel to be set up in a spare bedroom at his brother’s house with hospice care. Dale thinks we probably have about a week or two left, unless Joel’s condition can be stabilized somewhat better than it is now. He can’t eat, can’t keep anything down, and is still having liver problems. There will be no more chemotherapy. The cancer will attack first the liver, then the lungs. We all understand that the end is close.

  Joel told me he is going to visit his brother “for a while”.

  ---

  I’m still not blogging actively. I do expect to publish a PhotoPost including some of the 237 photos I took this weekend in Hollywood within the next couple of days. All the photos are in my Webshots folder entitled “Hollywood: The sign, Beachwood Estates, and the Cemetary. Joel and I discussed my living situation somewhat. I would like to be able to live in our house for a while, and hopefully Joel will be able to pay a couple of month’s extra rent so I can prepare the place for another roommate. (I told him I am not asking for anything more than one extra month’s rent.) I might have to move suddenly, but right now I’m going to roll with the punches as it were. I am in the midst of a mammoth cleaning undertaking. Joel has never been a very good housekeeper and I stopped picking up after him some years back. I really don’t want to have to give up the cats right away either, so I hope to stay in my present house, get it renovated (I won’t mind having the place renovated while I live here.) get a new roommate somehow, and live here for a couple of years more. The cats are about 15 years old, and I really am  not looking forward to having them put to sleep in the event of Joel’s passing, but wouldn’t want to move into a new place with them either. MFN/ppf

  • 10:19 am
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