The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite books. I can't tell you how many times I've read it, although not since Peter Jackson made his practically perfect in every way screen adaptation of the epic. And in that enormous story, my favorite chapter of all is in the third volume (the Return of the King); The Siege of Gondor. In that chapter, the forces of good are holed up in the White City of Gondor as the forces of evil amass on the field below and battle is engaged. It's horrible, the gate is breeched and just when it seems all is lost, our heroes hear, far off in the distance, the sound of the horns of their allies who took forever and a fucking day to get there.
That's how I felt yesterday, when Lena arrived.
She came with Greg, the owner of the home health care company that agreed to venture into the zombie flu cave and give me a hand. There are heroes, superheroes and Great Heroes of literature and then there are folks like the First Responders who charged into the World Trade Center on 9/11 and Lena.
What has Ironman done for me lately? Ironman can suck it.
As soon as we were settled, I went and took a nap while Lena looked after Dad. A few hours of shuteye and I felt prepared to take on the afternoon. We had a nice dinner, I baked the rest of the chocolate chip cookies I'd had the presence of mind to grab on my way out of the house seven days ago, we watched a couple episodes of the Office and Dad was ready to go to bed.
Lena and I got him washed up, into his jammies and tucked into bed. All of that takes about an hour. We got him down by 8:00 and I immediately followed suit, leaving Lena to wrestle with the demon Dad turns into about a half hour after lights out.
I awoke just enough during the night to be aware that he was up to his same old shenanigans; hollering all night long, calling out to everyone he's ever know and fighting Lena, trying to get out of bed. She managed him like a champ.
At 6:00 am, I awoke, stripped off and remade the bed and Lena and I switched places. I got Dad up. He remembered nothing of his awful behavior all night, only that he was exhausted.
Of the many things I never (in a million years) imagined I would do or say is to cheer when I discovered that my Dad had pooped. Welcome to the new normal.
Oh yea; the diarrhea that plagued Dad last week had stopped when he stopped eating, which was around Saturday. His appetite has been returning so it's good that his other functions are, as well.
We read the paper, took his temperature, filled in the Dept. of Health monitoring questionnaire, had coffee and a little bit of breakfast. Then we talked to Mom on the phone and I talked to Dad's doctor about getting some meds that would help him sleep at night. Horse tranquilizers, maybe. He fell asleep in his chair while talking to mom so after I hung up, I asked him if he wanted to try taking an actual nap in his bed. He was up for it and ended up sleeping actually sleeping! in his bed for about 2 hours. In that time, I took a shower, got dressed and read the news.
Today is shaping up to be a really good day.