12 Days: a blur

It’s been a few days of mass chaos and confusion so, I apologize that I haven’t had a chance to get you caught up. By the time I posted that last entry (arriving at the clinic), we were actually on day 11 of the 12 day treatment protocol. It hit me so oddly that those 11 days had been such a blur! I just couldn’t believe we were almost finished! So, unfortunately, (or not depending on how much detail you were looking forward to)  I will try to summarize the 12 days as they all did pretty much blend together as we experienced much the same routine every day.
Sadly, given the condition Dad was in when we arrived at the clinic, he never really caught on to the amazing good that could be going on in his body. The hallucinations, confusion, ripping out of IVs, and unfortunate sporadic necessary restraining that had begun the week before at the Arlington hospital continued here in Mexico. (I don’t know who felt worse about restraining Dad, me or Dr. Payan. By this point, I’d realized that was our only resort to keeping him getting the good stuff his body needed, I swear Dr. Payan almost cried as we put them on). Many times Dad asked if we could just go home, to which I would reply that we’re basically stuck here in a foreign country with no transportation, no way to get home, and besides, he’s not strong enough yet to make the journey anyway.
This picture is of one of his escape attempts:

If he would just fight with, instead of against us and the process we’re working through, he’d start feeling better and stronger and we could go! In hindsight, I realize through his confusion, that it probably didn’t help to have people around him all speaking a foreign language… even though for the most part, everyone spoke to him in English, there was a lot of chattering in Spanish going on around him, including me in my broken Spanish trying to communicate with the staff. So, his distrust of me would come and go still. He was so cute trying to convince me that we could “just go down and get the car and go!” Sometimes, when he wasn’t liking me at that particular moment, he would say, “just take me home and you can go your way and I’ll go mine!”
Treatments continued every day and he took them like a champ, sometimes complaining that the “oven” was too hot, and maybe not wanting to take ALL the oral vitamins every day, but we got through most of the therapies that we were supposed to. I think the only thing we didn’t get to try was the magnet therapy.

By the end of week one, the doc was finally starting to realize that Dad really wasn’t going to eat like he needed to in order to get the strength back up and finally started preparations for inserting a feeding tube.Long story shorter, we got the tube in on Thanksgiving Day! And we started giving him some Glucerna (the lower sugar version of Ensure). They were also able to give him his vitamins and detox drinks via tube as well, so this was going to work out just fine!
Friday, 11/25
After a couple days of deteriorating mental/physical state, even after putting feeding tube down his nose, Dr. Payan and I start to speak frankly. Dad’s probably not going to fight much longer. I email family/friends to start preparing for the worst and let myself throw a crying tantrum there in the room… pleading with Dad to snap out of it and start working with us.

Saturday, 11/26
Last official day of the protocols. Dr. Payan helps me work through the logistics of staying vs. getting back to US soil. Whereas, he was very open to continuing basic care, we decide that it would probably work best to get back across the border sooner than later, if for no other reason than to get me back into communication with and give family/friends the opportunity to get out here “just in case”. So, I packed our bags and prepare to get us back to the states on Sunday. I scoot my bed up right next to his tonight and hold his hand for a little while. Earlier, he’d been laying on his side and I noted then that as he rested his arm across the bed rail, that it probably wasn’t doing the IV in the crook of his elbow any favors. I tried to move his arm back to a pillow in front of him, but he kept putting it back. So, sure enough, later in the evening, the night nurse came in to give him some medicine and they had to “finish” pulling out the port and search for yet another vein to insert a new port. This one went into the top of the left hand, so… since he’s been leaving the feeding tube alone, I only restrained his right hand after he started messing with the new port. He fell asleep pretty soon thereafter. In the middle of the night, he started getting agitated again, (which he usually did when he needed to use the bathroom) and I started the process of reassuring him that he could go, right there in the bed, (I tried to avoid saying “diaper” so, I would just remind him that he’s on the bedpan and we would clean him up as soon as he was finished. As this has become another one of our routine conversations, it usually only lasts about 20 minutes or so before it clicks and he says “OK! Here it comes!” and I congratulate him and keep checking for completion so I can, as promised, get him cleaned up as soon as possible. Well, for some reason tonight (this morning) it takes about TWO HOURS!!! of his constant chattering “hurry hurry hurry, please please please, help help help” before he finally gave in to the urge. I was SOOO frustrated with him, he would never complete a sentence (We’d been having this same broken conversation for DAYS!) so, I’m constantly trying to decipher what I need to hurry to do, how can I help? Please...what? After we got him cleaned up, he didn’t stop mumbling/groaning as usual and I was so tired of trying to reassure him that we were leaving in just a few short hours, that I finally retreated to the farthest part of the room I could find, put my headphones on as loud as I could and tried to drown him out and sleep for a little while, I could actually still hear him over the music. When I finally awoke an hour or so later, I looked over and realized that I never tied down that left hand, and sure enough, to my despair, he’d pulled out the feeding tube. AAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH!!!! I cannot even describe my agony for him… not knowing how in the world we would feed him now…well, hopefully once we get into Yuma, they’ll put it back in and we can start over. So much for a quick summary! The process will continue with my own date stamps to describe the coming days…