Tuesday, March 6, 2007
So, the gathering was over at about noon on Sunday, and I headed over to Daughter and Hercules's apartment, which was only about 15 minutes away. Hercules was just returning from a run. Daughter was still at her conference. Hercules and I were going to go geocaching, but I fell asleep on the couch while he was taking a shower, and he didn't wake me until Daughter got home. Then we all three went geocaching.
It was an easy one, rather obviously hidden in a little-old-lady-friendly area, but it was fun anyway.
I'm going to buy myself a hiking GPS just like the one I got for Hercules, and start doing it myself around here.
Daughter is taking the next two weeks off (or however long it takes) to go to Colorado and attempt to drag her father back east. She got a call from his neighbor over the weekend while she was at her conference that he had fallen and couldn't get up, and he was taken to the hospital - for the third time in two months. It's now uncontrolled diabetes. He is simply incapable of taking care of himself.
She flew out yesterday and I haven't heard from her since. I called Hercules this evening and left a voice mail, if he'd heard from her, please fill me in. I don't know what advice I could give her. His sisters won't want him, and he can't stay with her and Hercules. He's got plenty of money, and the kids are looking for a house, so maybe he could buy a mother-daughter (father-daughter?) duplex for the three of them. (A fortune teller long ago said that *I* would end up living with him again, but I really don't see that happening!)
She talked to a social worker at the hospital on Sunday evening while I was there. She wanted to make sure that the hospital didn't discharge him before she got there. I could hear the woman clearly (Daughter's cell is very loud), and it sounded like she started out saying something like that there was no chance he'd be discharged anytime soon, and then she realized that maybe over the phone she should be a bit more circumspect and back off to "there are no discharge orders in the works". So, he may be worse off than Daughter expects. I wouldn't be surprised if his kidneys are failing.
He's only six weeks older than I. But he's been working on dying for as long as I've known him.
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2 comments:
Geocaching seems like a fun activity to me, but I just don't know about wandering around by myself to find something set up by a stranger.
Kate -
Daughter and Hercules have hooked up with a geocaching group in their area, dinners once a month or something. If there's a group in your area, you might find someone who would like to go after a particular cache, and you can team up.
A lot of them are in very public areas. Daughter pointed out her apartment window and said "There's one right over there...." in a clump of shrubbery near a bus stop. I was amazed that no one had found it by accident, but she said it's very well hidden.
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