well, hell

My stepdad is unconscious. He has been that way since late yesterday afternoon. All because he fell and broke his hip on Friday morning.
In truth, he didn't actually break his hip, but he shattered the head of the femur where it fits into the hip. He had been washing a load of laundry, as he has done many times throughout his 89 years of life. Apparently, he had finished and was taking the clean clothes into the house when he got tripped up and fell in his carport. He finally managed to attract the attention of a neighbor, then spent all day in the emergency room while options were discussed. Finally, a choice was made and he was moved to another hospital to have a partial hip replacement. The plan was to have the surgery Saturday morning, get him up and on the new hip on Sunday, then return him to the initial hospital for two weeks of physical therapy.
Instead, after the surgery he developed a fever three degrees higher than body temperature. The doctors then had to find out where the infection was and determined he had some pneumonia present and had perhaps had it for a while. Throw some antibiotics at it and all would be well. He spent a lot of time sleeping on Saturday, but had good color in his cheeks when I saw him.
On Sunday, when I saw him in the early afternoon, he was fairly chipper. They had, indeed, gotten him up on the new right hip and he had even sat in the chair for a bit before moving back into the bed. The fever was only one degree higher than normal temperature. Progress! We chatted a bit, then he threw me out so he could take a nap.
On Monday, things took a serious turn for the worse. He had been up and walking around and then sat in the chair, same as the day before. This time, however, when it was time to move back into the bed in mid-afternoon, he passed out and scared everybody to death. Good thing he's a man of slight build and the on-duty nurse was a young man who caught him and kept him from breaking any other bones. He was moved into an Intensive Care Unit room for monitoring and tests. A CT scan revealed blood clots in his lungs, so now they would have to determine what new course of action to take.
By the time I saw him late that evening (approaching 9 pm), he was panicked from the oxygen mask covering his face. He reached for my hand as I entered the room and I took it and calmed him while the nurses got his heparin drip going and checked all the tubes going into him. The charge nurse then prepared some ice water to soothe his aching throat (oxygen gas has zero moisture and is quite drying) and she even swapped out his mask for the cannula tubes. Ah, relief! Now he felt so much like Himself that he even joked a bit and flirted with the nurses. Much better! After he was all set for the night and sent me home, I went, feeling much better about the situation than when I had arrived.
Things went straight to hell on Tuesday morning. Because his oxygen levels weren't high enough, the mask was put back on. No one seemed to recall that he was a World War II veteran who had spent two years in his early 20's in a German POW camp and that he was terrified of having his mouth and nose covered. Sigh. When I saw him that morning, he was extremely agitated. Meanwhile, nothing happened while we all waited for the primary vascular surgeon to consult another about the best option. Late that afternoon, they put him under to vacuum his lungs and to place a filter in his femoral artery to block any clots coming from the hip surgery site.
That course of action was apparently not the best for an aged man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It's Wednesday and he is still unconscious and is lying in the bed, intubated - meaning a tube has been pushed from his nostrils into his lungs to carry oxygen. They are unable to insert a feeding tube because he has a hiatal hernia. This means it is simply a matter of time until his organs begin to fail. Man cannot live on glucose alone.
When I saw him early this afternoon, he looked as pale as a marble statue. I held his hand while I spoke to him and he was completely unresponsive. No hand movement, no eye movement, no movement of any kind. I don't intend to go into that ICU room again. I don't want to remember him that way and I know damn sure he wouldn't want that, either.