Text 15936, 110 rader
Skriven 2007-05-25 18:38:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: horsepistols 570
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There was some question whether the home care people or
the hospice people were going to take my father to his
appointments yesterday. I guess that they're a little gun-shy
on this as last time apparently the home care people took
my father for his lab tests (minus the paperwork) at the
same time the hospice nurse came by to draw blood for the
same lab tests ... Anyhow, I called both agencies, and in
fact each had no idea ... eventually I heard that the
hospice nurse had called the home care people to arrange
things, only nothing had been arranged. Upshot. I manhandled
the old guy into his new rental wheelchair and got a cab,
which got us there in time to do the lab work (3 days late).
Then met uncle S.Y. (invaluable help) to take him up to the
hematologist, who clucked over his numbers but didn't do
much, as the bad numbers were not in his purview; so we
wheeled the old man down to Clyde's, where we have had a few
decent meals over the years. It's somewhat better than the
hotel restaurant next to the doctor's office, but crossing
busy Wisconsin Avenue is a bit of a trial. Once in the
restaurant, the staff and layout are fairly accommodating:
there is a wheelchair elevator to the main floor and a real
one down to the rest rooms, and the aisles are nice and wide.

My father hasn't been eating, so we arranged for an assortment
of appetizing-sounding things to cajole him into getting a
little nourishment.

Two appetizers: fried oysters in herbed coating and scallops
wrapped in bacon - the former because we all like oysters, the
latter because I thought it would provide lots of calories with
little eating, and because, like son, like father, he enjoys
pig products. The oysters were pretty good, though the herbs
were a little overwhelming: he wouldn't touch them. The
scallops were a puny pathetic 4 bay scallops each wrapped in
half a slice of good, fairly smoky bacon, a tiny pile of
cress or something dressed with honey mustard in the middle -
this was $9, and you know what bay scallops look like. Highway
robbery. The scallops although overcooked (they had to cook
the bacon crisp, after all) were some of the sweetest and best
I've had in quite a while (at least as good as the ones in the
shell in Australia last year), as they should have been for
$2+ each for a few grams. He enjoyed half a scallop and a
bit of the bacon but didn't want to ruin his appetite for his
main course, which was a fairly large bowl of cream of crab,
which he downed without any help, along with a piece of the
odd extremely sweet poppy-seed bread that comes for the table.

S.Y. ordered fish and chips, which were unaccountably salty
and quite slimy with grease - almost worth sending back, but
instead, he gave me half the fish (I ate it after peeling off
the batter: it was quite unfresh and quite nasty) and ate
most of the oysters, which were sitting there as the old man
didn't want them.

I defied all expectations by ordering a spinach salad with
mango vinaigrette, which I had an inkling wouldn't be so
healthy as it sounded. It was in fact extremely caloric and
bad for one: the vinaigrette was more a sugarette dressing,
and the garnish of dried cranberries and cinnamon-sugar pecans
would be enough to send anyone's glucometer off the charts.
And topping this were three chicken tenders, each about 3
ounces, coated in the almost same salty herby coating as the
oysters had had. These were very tender! having been brined
beforehand and cooked at a high temperature so the coating
was hard as a rock and the meat still pink - as far as I
was concerned, perfect, after I peeled off more starch.

I probably should have had the burger, which would not have
thrown S.Y. into a tizzy (he pinched himself, shook his
head, got goggle-eyed, and so on when I ordered: quite the
comedian when he gets into his head to be one). It would
also have been better for me and better tasting.

Even factoring in half an hour for a bathroom visit (I
could never have been a nurse), we still had a couple hours
to kill before the renal appointment. We sat around for a
while and then went for a treat to Gifford's - when I was
yay big it was a treat to go to Gifford's on Georgia Avenue
in Silver Spring, where I'd have a scoop of either butter
brickle or mint chocolate chip. The place fell on hard
times, went out of business, but was reconstituted and is
now a chain of I believe four, none in Silver Spring, ice
cream parlors; the one in Friendship Heights is tiny and
doesn't have butter brickle ice cream. I tasted a bit of
S.Y.'s mango sorbet (pretty good with chunks and a few
strings of mango) and shared my father's choice - pistachio
ice cream, of which he had a few teaspoonsful and I the
rest (with lots of pills); this was a standard green ice
cream with very salty nuts, rather refreshing for a hot day.

Then at my father's request we went to "the nice park,"
a block away with all the peace and quiet that a block can
buy, where we spent quite some time staring at the fountain
before going to the nephrologist.

Who looked at him and immediately clapped him in hospital:
his creatinine was 6.8 and climbing (anything over 1.2
indicatess active kidney disease). By the time we got to
Sibley it had climbed to 8. They stuck an IV into him to
replenish his fluids and put him in the CCU; I stayed with
him until 10 or 11, when my brother came to fetch me, and
I did a flurry of phoning and e-mailing before coming back
in the morning, and that's where I'm writing this from.
Dialysis is promised, finally, within the hour. Just had a
pleasant conversation with the hospice people - a mutual
firing, as aggressive measures and hospice are incompatible.

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