Email: (from me to a friend)

Thanks, [friend].  I did feel encouraged after the neurosurgeon was in today.  Surgery is scheduled for next week &, if nothing else, it helps to know things are moving along and this will lead to getting more concrete answers.  He seemed a bit optimistic about removing the tumor, although I know there are a lot of risks involved.  Find myself expecting the worst, but who knows what God will do?  One step at a time, right?  Have to keep reminding myself to trust God… feel like my brain is on overload with everything it’s trying to process.  Ugh.  I’m so, so sorry for all you had to go through with your dad.  Know you dealt with this type of stuff and so much more.

Appreciate your offer to help.  Until surgery, it won’t look like there will be anymore juggling of hospital visits, so that will help out a lot.  At this point, they’re saying my dad will be discharged probably tomorrow and be able to stay home till surgery.  Not sure how that will work out, but I’m sure that would be better for him than waiting it out in the hospital for surgery(?).  Then after surgery, he’ll most likely be in the hospital for 5 days of recovery, so we’ll see how that goes and I will keep you posted.

-Kari

My Reflections:

I visit Papa at the hospital today.  He has visitors from his & Nana’s church.  In talking with all of us, Papa is surprisingly very jovial and animated (even more so than Papa would normally be). He seems overly talkative and doesn’t seem to mind that we still can’t fully understand what he’s saying.  We do our best to communicate though, watching his exaggerated hand gestures and attempting to figure out the context of the conversation.  While there, a pastor from their church asks if he can read some scripture and wants to know if Papa has a favorite passage from the Bible he’d like to hear.  Papa’s able to communicate the verse and the pastor reads it… something about going out into the wilderness or such, a bit despondent in its tone and not at all what any of us present would consider the usual “favorite verse” fare.  But the pastor obliges and then we joke with Papa about why he picked it.

After Papa’s visitors leave, I stay and chat a while longer.  I use the term “chat” loosely as conversing with Papa at present is anything but what you’d expect a light, casual “chat” to be like.

At one point in our conversation, Papa tries to write out questions and responses to Nana and me.  We soon realize though, that Papa’s handwriting is just as mixed up as his speech.  He knows what he wants to write, it just won’t come out right.  He writes some words, and then crosses them out as he tries so hard to get his brain to formulate the words he’s trying to communicate.  Nana saves the paper with some of what he writes today.

He writes:

LARRY IS INAI  INAN  INTO AN A TN  TUSA TUMON TUSA T TUMONS BAM BAIND I.

Nana & I look at him and look at his writing and then look at each other as if to say “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”  And then we attempt to do what that nurse has told us to do: work at understanding this gibberish.

He writes some more:

ASK EUSAMIN THUSAMUM

And we try to figure out whoever “EAUSAMIN THUSAMUM” is by asking question upon question and suggesting anyone we can possibly think of.

And then we take a good 10-15 minutes of back-and-forth over QUALISE and SEISENP; and then AUUA, COSTS, COSTO, KIBL, CUSMTL, and SAMS; just to figure out that Papa’s asking about what brand of hearing aide I have.  When I tell him it’s Widex, Papa responds,

“Yeahhh, that’s what I say…., SEISENP!”

He’s trying to let me know about hearing aides being available at Sams Club and wondering if they’d be just as good as what I have.  It’s his attempt at small talk, but, unfortunately, just “small talk” takes an excruciating amount of concentration, focus, and patience on Nana’s and my part.  It’s like trying to solve a big coded mystery, except the “big” mystery involves such things as hearing aide brands and wholesale shopping marts.

My brain hurts when I return home from the hospital.  This communication business is exhausting!