Was it Stubbornness or a Suicide Attempt?

Blog Entry 2

I realized that it isn't going to flow in a blog if I copy the chapters in the book, so I skipped my introduction and Chapter one.

This is part of chapter 2, just showing you how the craziness progresses....

Was it stubbornness or a Suicide Attempt?

One day, we all got a call. It was mom.

“Harry and I were arguing. I told him he did not take his medicine.  We went round and round with this. He got mad at me and said, “Ok then.  Here you go.” He took a whole week’s worth of pills and swallowed them down with some water.”

“How much?”

“A whole week’s worth. He picked up the pill 

dispenser and took every one of them. I don’t know what to do and he won’t go to the hospital.”

Brenda, Dan and I all raced over to their home.

My father completely denied taking the pills. The pill container was empty, though.

Dad kept arguing that my mother was making it up. He was nasty.”You think you know everything. I told you I didn’t take them.”

Finally, my brother looked him in the eye. “Dad, I need to know if you took those pills.

Did you?”

Then my Father admitted that he took ALL the pills.  We checked with the hospital and they said he needed to come in - NOW.

Dan said, “Dad, we have to take you to the hospital. Where are your shoes?”

Dan picked up the pair of tennis shoes and he shoved and shoved to cram dad’s feet into the shoes. He said, “Dad, these are really tight.” He was frantic and we did not know if his life was in danger or not.

Dad had a hard time walking, but Dan got him in the car and we all went to the hospital.

We later found out that he had shoved my MOTHER’S  shoes on dad’s feet. That’s why it was so hard to put them on. Tennis shoes all look alike.

The hospital attendants said they would “keep him under observation”, and apparently they don’t pump people’s stomachs anymore. So we watched as Dad’s pulse slowly went down. No one seemed overly concerned. I went home to make dinner and was coming back.  Brenda and Mom went to the cafeteria, since they  were waiting. They had heard Dad be uncooperative with the medical staff before they left. Dad was not happy being there. Dan was alone with my dad.  No one was watching his vital signs but Dan. There was a monitor on him. Dan watched as Dad’s pulse went down. The nurses said they were watching from the main reception area, but Dan started to get nervous. His heart began to race. He was getting upset. He was watching the number of beats per minute go down.  He was concerned , but he thought surely the staff was watching this. Then Dad’s pulse went down,  down to 10… 9…8… 7……BEEP!!! BEEP! BEEP!

Dan started yelling. Dad was coding. The doctor rushed in  with the paddles to revive him, knocking Dan over in the process. Dan was traumatized beyond belief. 

Dan said they hit dad with the paddles once. Then they hit him again. Dad sat up, looked at my brother and said, “Don’t think you know what the f***is going on.” He then fell backwards and they hit him two more times. His pulse came back.

They made Dan leave the room. Dan was shaken and ready to kill someone. I have always wondered WHY they let Dad’s heartbeat go down to the very bottom. To this day my brother is still traumatized over this.

When we all returned we realized we had completely missed all the drama. They kept him overnight for observation. It was like being on a roller coaster. We were all numb. Then they decided they had to hospitalize him.

The Psych Ward

When a person overdoses, doctors have to take the situation seriously. They put my dad in another hospital with the psychiatric patients. He was there for about a month. One thing we totally missed happened then. Dad had not been diagnosed with any memory issues up until this point.

In the hospital he told my mom he had waited for lunch one day and the ward was completely quiet and dark. No one else was looking for their meal. It was 12 on the clock. WHY were they not feeding him?

It was 12 a.m. He thought it was lunch time. Getting the times messed up is something an Alzheimer’s patient might do. We did not recognize this very telling sign that there was more going on there.  

Funny things happened to dad there. He looked at us and whispered, “These people are crazy.  Why am I here?” We told him it was because he took at the pills at once. A lady in the ward allegedly got into bed with him. He was pretty upset about that.

We told him to cooperate with the doctors and he would get out of there soon.  (We kids were amused because we thought he should have been there a long time ago.) When they asked him, “Why did you take the pills?”, he answered, “Because I wanted to kill myself.” He thought he was being funny. Brenda finally coached him and told him, “Dad, if you ever want to get out of here, stop saying that.” He was there for about a month, leading the sing-alongs at the end. Dad had a very odd sense of humor, to say the least.