Another Dad Update in New Beginnings

Dad had another bad night. He didn’t sleep much if he slept at all. He has becoming increasingly more zoned out. He just lays in his bed staring absent mindedly at the wall. The nurses started giving him pain medicine every hour rather than every couple of hours. The only two things he asks for are pain meds and ice chips.

One of the doctors, Dr. Young, stopped by this morning. Apparently, there’s a delicate balance of pain medicine. Coughing is obviously painful for Dad, which pain medicine can relieve. However, the purpose of coughing is to clear all that blockage out of his lungs, so when we supress his cough, the oxygenation treatment becomes less effective (he has a pair of tubes blowing oxygen up his nose).

I wish he would fall asleep and pass peacefully. Just seeing him like this is agonizing; I can’t imagine what his pain must actually feel like. I suppose it’ll all be over in the next day or two.