Sweet Catastrophe

So this morning I was on the shuttle–we had sort of a nature lab that I was headed to behind the Rec center, and I felt my phone vibrate with a voicemail. It was my dad letting me know that Papa wasn’t going to last very long. Apparently the doctors hadn’t thought he was going to last through last night. Not really sure why the hell I hadn’t heard about that sooner.

So at this point, I can’t miss this lab, and I have a Spanish test I can’t miss either, so from 9:30am till about 1pm, I’m crying off and on–on campus–and holding back as much as I can.

I made it to Douglas about two and Papa looks so pitiful. He’s tinier than I ever thought I’d see my robust Papa. You can barely hear anything he says, and that’s just hard to take when you’re used to his jolly, booming voice.

They had decided that his kidneys were done. In addition to that, he’s given up. He doesn’t want to live anymore.

Now, before I left, a hospice nurse came by to give him a new catheter. She ended up pushing through a blood clot that had apparently formed in his bladder and ended up draining 700ccs(or whatever measurement, I think that was it…) of urine. Of course, we don’t really know for certain if that’s just what was already there, or if that means his kidneys aren’t failing.

So now we’re back to just not knowing. He can’t get to a doctor and doctors won’t come to him, so there’s no way of knowing for sure what’s wrong, but the fact remains that he has no will. He told me so many times that he was tired and only part of the time he meant sleepy.

I don’t know how to feel. I want him to let go because I know he’s miserable, and I know he’s never coming back from this. Of course, there’s the selfish reasons as well–I can’t do this every other day. I can’t spend every other day saying goodbye to my Papa. My heart just can’t take it.

At the same time, you never want someone to go, and I don’t know what my grandmother is going to do.

Everyone over there is so in denial. They act like just because the catheter is now in correctly, he’s going to have some miraculous recovery and jump out of bed.

I just don’t know who’s more selfish–them for wanting him to stay so badly, or me for wanting him to go ahead and go.

Just please continue to send thoughts our way guys. I really don’t know what’s going to happen, and until he passes, or has some miraculous recovery, my heart will be in a constant state of breaking. This limbo is tearing all our hearts apart.