It was a messed up weekend, starting with high hopes and ending with a real scare.
The dashed high hopes seem trivial now -- delays and then bad traffic prevented me from going to a Carmen Consoli concert I was really looking forward to Saturday night. She's like an Italian indie-rocker who is just starting to play over here.
Yesterday, Sunday, I called my dad, who is 73, has diabetes and lives alone. No answer. I called back 10 minutes later and still no answer. So I drove over and found him lying on the floor unconscious. He had been that way for hours, I guess -- he had taken something that dropped his sugar levels so low he went into hypoglycemia, which is a coma-like state. I freaked out. Called 911. They took him to the emergency room, and released him later. He's OK today, but I can't get that feeling out of my mind, the way he looked at me as I was trying vainly to revive him -- all dilated pupils, no recognition.
I'm now looking into services, resources etc. available. He sees a doctor and is generally good about his diabetes, but he has had these episodes before, though this the first time I've found him (in the past, he'd tell me later that he passed out for like 7 or 8 hours). What's fucked up is that if it affects his decisions, then every day seems to be a new danger, and makes me wonder what I can realistically do short of moving back in with him. I have next week off so will probably spend it hunting down services or resources that will help me monitor him, because I can't be with him all the time.
Saturday started out weird. I woke up insanely early for no reason, but instead of trying to sleep I got up psyched about the day. I ditched the idea of a bike ride at 10 because the weariness caught up with me, and the sequence of events led to delays that made me miss the Carmen Consoli concert (not that it matters, I'm just saying). But when I got up, it was still dark and the weekend lay ahead. I can't say I was happy, but it an almost better feeling -- I was content, and hopeful of what I thought would be a great weekend. I brewed coffee, checked in on SG and took a picture from my balcony as the sun rose. Here's what I saw ...
The dashed high hopes seem trivial now -- delays and then bad traffic prevented me from going to a Carmen Consoli concert I was really looking forward to Saturday night. She's like an Italian indie-rocker who is just starting to play over here.
Yesterday, Sunday, I called my dad, who is 73, has diabetes and lives alone. No answer. I called back 10 minutes later and still no answer. So I drove over and found him lying on the floor unconscious. He had been that way for hours, I guess -- he had taken something that dropped his sugar levels so low he went into hypoglycemia, which is a coma-like state. I freaked out. Called 911. They took him to the emergency room, and released him later. He's OK today, but I can't get that feeling out of my mind, the way he looked at me as I was trying vainly to revive him -- all dilated pupils, no recognition.
I'm now looking into services, resources etc. available. He sees a doctor and is generally good about his diabetes, but he has had these episodes before, though this the first time I've found him (in the past, he'd tell me later that he passed out for like 7 or 8 hours). What's fucked up is that if it affects his decisions, then every day seems to be a new danger, and makes me wonder what I can realistically do short of moving back in with him. I have next week off so will probably spend it hunting down services or resources that will help me monitor him, because I can't be with him all the time.
Saturday started out weird. I woke up insanely early for no reason, but instead of trying to sleep I got up psyched about the day. I ditched the idea of a bike ride at 10 because the weariness caught up with me, and the sequence of events led to delays that made me miss the Carmen Consoli concert (not that it matters, I'm just saying). But when I got up, it was still dark and the weekend lay ahead. I can't say I was happy, but it an almost better feeling -- I was content, and hopeful of what I thought would be a great weekend. I brewed coffee, checked in on SG and took a picture from my balcony as the sun rose. Here's what I saw ...
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
I don't know if your dad's anything like my dad, but I thought that one of the most important reasons I was going to make sure we had some care for him was to keep him regular. I thought that if he got up and went to bed around the same time each day that he would sleep better, and if he ate at the same times each day his blood sugar would be more in control. This is mostly intuition, but I stand by my intuition.