Seeing the Light

Wow! I can't believe how many books have already been sold! Thank you, thank you. I sincerely hope you enjoy the book and the journey. Now that this one is out and about, I am going back to my other two ones that I have been tinkering on during this process. The first one is tentatively titled: What to expect in God's waiting room. It is the accumulation of 40 years of nursing, twenty-one of them spent as a nursing home administrator. It is meant to be a source of information from within the industry to guide when considering a possible nursing home admission. No funny stories there, just simple language about the jargon and process.

The other book I am tentatively calling Second Chances. It is about my years of experience in working with patients with addictions, mental illness, behavior disorders, dementia, and brain injury. Written from the point of view of the sick humor of healthcare workers who laugh to cope with the heartbreak. Of course, names, genders, dates, places, and anything identifiable have been changed to protect patient privacy.

Meanwhile, some more outtakes.

Dad and the manure spreader had many close calls. Especially when his eyes started to fail him.  Dad went through life like the stereotypical Taurus bull. He looked at neither right nor left but always moved forward. When the cataracts got worse, so did the fallout from his steadfast refusal to consider consequences.

During a thunderstorm one summer night, some tree branches had broken off and were lying on the fence in the pasture. Now older, Dad didn’t want to walk all the way to the far side of the fence line with a heavy chainsaw to cut the branches for firewood.

As Mom would say, “Use your brains, not your back.”

To get to the fence, Dad took the tractor that was conveniently hooked up to the manure spreader. Finding a relatively clean spot on the bottom of the spreader, Dad set his heavy chainsaw down and drove the tractor across the field to the pasture.

He cut the fallen branches into chunks suitable for firewood, freeing the fence. He left the wood where it was, since we didn’t need it at that moment.  When winter came, someone would remember there was a pile of firewood across the field and pasture. Plus, the manure spreader was never thoroughly cleaned out, and he didn’t want the wood to get covered in manure; the chainsaw occupied the only clean spot.

As he drove back into the yard, Dad thought that since he was already on the tractor hooked up to the manure spreader, he might as well run the barn cleaner. He filled the manure spreader from the barn cleaner, never once glancing at the back of the spreader. 

Telling me the story later, he said, “I got to the field, and I threw the clutch for the shit spreader.”

He didn’t look back or remember the chainsaw, which was now covered in a soup of cow manure and straw.

“I forgot all about that son-of-a-bitch chainsaw I left sitting in there. I was almost to the end of the field, and something made a helluva sound, and that damn chainsaw went flying. Damn thing would’ve taken my head off if it hit me,” he remarked.

Mom had to call Tubby to stop by after work to “fix the chainsaw your father ran through the shit spreader.”

Walking through the house, he saw the chainsaw, covered in manure, sitting on spread-out newspapers. Tubby, who hated farming, had to take the chainsaw apart piece by piece to clean out the embedded manure. He did the job without complaining.  Well, at least not complaining loud enough for our half-deaf father to hear. Mom and I heard a stream of profanity and threats not to allow Dad near anything mechanical again.

Tubby got the chainsaw cleaned out and working. But Dad complained that the chainsaw never worked the same again.

“It's your own damn fault,” Mom would tell him.

One day, Mom called me at work and put Dad on the phone. 

“Pooch, I almost killed your dog”. 

My parents had a small mixed-breed dog, a combination of cocker spaniel and poodle, which they got for me when I was in high school. She was a ten-pound white bundle of fluff that Dad adored and kept after I returned from college. 

The dog, a product of misguided cross-breeding and sadly lacking in common sense, followed Dad everywhere if allowed out when he was working.  Ginger snuck out of the house one day as he went to clean the barn. 

As the manure slopped up the barn cleaner chute, the dog climbed into the manure spreader box to swim and bounce around in the pooling manure.  Dad didn’t notice the dog when he got on the tractor; she was camouflaged in manure, happily playing. 

“I was out spreading shit, and the damn dog went flying past me. She must have gone through the beaters and got flung right out.”

He assured me that the dog, when caught and examined, was perfectly healthy without a mark on her.  She was not only fine but had the nerve to make Dad chase her across the field, which really pissed him off. Ginger had a perfect day, a pool of manure to splash in, a ride in a wagon, a flight through the air, and then Dad played catch me around the field.

Dad marveled for years at the dog that went through the sharp beaters circling at high speed, flew, and landed on the hard ground. 

From then on, he made sure “the damn dog” stayed in the house when he cleaned the barn.  The dog never blamed Dad for her flight and adored him until the day she died, happily following him around the farm every chance she got.

Dad never drank alcohol, and I could probably count on one hand the number of times he took a Tylenol or an aspirin. He didn’t trust medicine, and he trusted doctors even less. 

            “You go to a doctor, and they start looking, and they don’t stop until they find something wrong with you.  Then you end up doctoring all the damn time!”

Mom had insisted he see a doctor because she was worried about his driving. It wasn’t just the numerous battery chargers that Dad drove over, but his erratic driving on the road that terrified her. When Dad started having trouble following the rows with the baler, he finally agreed to get his eyes checked.

The doctor told him his cataracts were so severe that he was essentially blind. Dad was terrified. The doctor told him that he needed to have surgery to remove the cataract. Now, the situation involved a hospital and surgery. Dad’s father had told him when he was nine,

“I’m going to the hospital, and I am not going to be coming back.”

His father died in the hospital, creating a lifelong fear of anything medical in Dad. Dad was trapped in this situation.  Mom was telling him, “Damn it, Reuben, you are gonna kill somebody if you don’t get your eyes fixed.”

The final decision was made when Mom threatened to take away the key (or a flathead screwdriver), forcing Dad to stop driving. Not that Dad drove any great distances, but if Mom had her way, he couldn’t even go visiting the neighbors.  Caught between a rock (Mom) and a hard place (not being able to go visiting), Dad agreed to the surgery.

The plan was to operate on one eye first, let it heal, and then repeat with the second eye. Dad gave a reluctant okay, and Mom scheduled the surgery at Wadena Hospital. At that time, I was in my early thirties, working in town, and living alone. Mom called me to announce that Dad had actually agreed to eye surgery. 

The day before the surgery, I called home to check on Dad.  I knew that at this point, he would be trying to find an excuse to avoid the procedure. It was noon when I called, and I figured Mom would be in the house watching “Young and the Restless” while making lunch. I would talk to Mom and hear the creative excuses Dad was giving for not having the eye surgery.

I was stunned when Dad answered the phone. He never answered the phone or made outgoing calls. He would sit in his chair beneath the black telephone hanging on the wall, and when it rang, he would yell "Phone!" repeatedly until someone picked up.

But this time, he answered. Hearing his voice gave me a pang of concern; if Dad was the one to answer, it meant he was stressed enough to pick up the phone. He was probably hoping it was the doctor calling to cancel the surgery.

"How are you doing?" I asked him.

"Oh, Pooch." His voice sounded so forlorn and frightened, a tiny shadow of the powerful and often intimidating man I knew.

"I don’t know if I can do this, Pooch. I’m thinking I can’t do this," he said.

“I’ll come home after work and stay the night so I can go in with you in the morning.”

"You can do that?" he asked, surprised.

"I’ll come right after work," I replied.

When I came home, Dad was a nervous wreck. He ate his supper silently, then sat in his recliner with the day-old newspaper, reading while listening to the TV.

Mom kept whispering to me, “I don’t think he’s gonna do it.”

“If he wants to cancel, tell him to call the doctor and cancel.”

“He can’t see to dial a phone.”

“Then I guess he is gonna have to have the surgery, isn’t he?  You just tell him if he wants to back out, he’s gonna have to be the one to do it”. 

Mom didn’t like my answer, but by then, I was in my early thirties and known for being “bullheaded” and “mean-mouthed.” I set clear boundaries, and even Mom and Dad didn’t argue with me about them. Dad needed this surgery for the quality of his life. The fact that Dad couldn’t see to dial a telephone showed precisely why he needed the surgery. There was no argument against having it.  

That night, I slept on the couch while Dad sat in his recliner, never going to bed. Throughout the night, I felt his large, calloused hand gently pushing my hair off my face, adjusting my pillow, and tucking the blanket around me.

When I woke up the next morning, Dad was sitting at the table, staring at his coffee and bowl of cornflakes. Mom had gone out to milk the cows, leaving him alone. He looked as if he knew the Governor wasn't going to call with a pardon and that an execution was imminent. He was a scared old man.

I approached him from behind and did something I hadn’t dared to do since I was a child: I stood behind his chair and touched his shoulders. Our family wasn’t big on hugging or kissing; the only times I was physically close to my father were when I bandaged a cut or removed a splinter. But this time, I placed my hands on his shoulders and gently held him.

Then, I started to speak. I described in detail what would happen to him, step by step, minute by minute, during the procedure. I explained that there would be no anesthesia to put him to sleep. The doctors would use eye drops to numb and dilate his eye. The drops might sting a little, but not as much as getting soap in the eyes. Soon, he wouldn’t even see light in that eye. I explained how the drops would work and the wait between each drop to dilate and numb his eye.

Once his eyes were fully dilated, they would put him on a small, wheeled bed, and two nurses would take him to the operating area. I told him it would be cold and quiet in the operating room. He would be laid down, and the doctor would cut off the scar tissue covering his eye. He wouldn’t feel it because the drops would have numbed his eye. He wouldn’t see anything coming towards him because the drops would have dilated his eyes so much.

In a few minutes, he would be back in a hospital room with me, Mom, and Cathy for an hour or so of observation. The nurses would give him dark glasses to wear for a day until the eye drops wore off.  The doctor would order some eye drops to put in for a few days, and then we would go home. I reminded him that by this time tomorrow, it will all be over.

“I will be there the entire time to make sure nobody screws up!” I reassured him.

Cathy drove us to the hospital in Wadena. Mom read the paperwork to him, he signed, and the four of us went to his assigned room. Nurses I knew from nursing school or who had grown up with me made a point of stopping by his room to say hello.

Some came because he was "June’s dad," and I was part of the "nurse mafia." It seemed like half the hospital came to see Dad that morning as he lay in bed, waiting for each precisely scheduled eye drop. A nurse practitioner friend of mine, who was Mom and Dad’s primary medical provider, stopped by to check on how Dad was feeling.

I asked the nurse practitioner for a Valium for Dad.

“We don’t usually give those out anymore; it’s such a simple and short procedure,” she told me.

“He didn’t sleep at all last night; he’s a nervous wreck.”

“You should have called me; I would have come over and brought him something. I’ll go order a Valium for him right now.”

“Smallest possible dose; he has no tolerance,” I added.

Shortly afterward, a nurse appeared with a Valium. By the time the drops were finished, the Valium had taken effect. Dad stopped the nurses when they put him on the gurney to go to the operating room.

“Pooch, you come with me!” he insisted.

“Dad,” I told him as he gripped my hand, “I can’t go in; I’m not scrubbed in. It’s against the rules.”

Fortunately, his nurse, someone I knew from nursing school, chimed in, "She’s right, Mr. Baumgart; they won’t let anyone in who isn’t scrubbed up."

Holding his hand, I walked beside the gurney through the hospital hallways. I slipped his hand from mine at the door to the operating area. The Valium was working well; Dad didn’t resist or argue anymore as they rolled him away.

Mom, Cathy, and I sat in his hospital room waiting for Dad to finish. We watched the TV and the clock.  It was a simple procedure, and without anesthesia, there wasn’t much that could go wrong.  Still, I worried about the stress and its effect on Dad’s heart and breathing.

In less than an hour, Dad returned to the room completely under the influence of the Valium. He was stoned and silly from his one Valium. I don’t know what he said to the nurses bringing him back, but they were all giggling like high school girls, saying things like, “Oh, Mr. Baumgart!” and “Oh my!”

“I know where you get it from,” one of the nurses told me as they settled him into bed.

Dad lay back in the bed, looked at Mom and Cathy, and announced,

“You two go get something to eat. Pooch can stay here.”

Apparently, my nursing degree had finally earned me some respect in Dad's eyes, and he found me helpful in that frightening place. Everything had gone exactly as I had told him it would, and my camaraderie and the medical team's recognition of me had impressed him.

Mom and Cathy didn’t leave, though; they sat in the corner of the room, giggling and guffawing as Dad rambled nonsensically. I began to wonder if the Valium dose had been stronger than I thought. Dad was feeling better than he had in a long time and was flying higher on that one pill than most people would.

Dad became fixated on the paperwork he completed at intake. “Organ donor; they wanted to know if I wanted to be an organ donor.” He found the idea hilarious.

“I ain't got anything that isn’t worn out.” He told the nurse checking on him.

Then he paused for a moment and added, “I could donate my dick. That’s still in pretty good shape. Someone might as well have some fun with it if I can’t. Yeah, I will donate my dick. Plenty of people would want that. It’s a good size, too; nobody would complain about that. What do you think, old lady, should I donate my dick?”

Mom was not amused. “Nobody wants that worn-out old thing, Reuben,” she told him.

Dad looked crushed for a moment before he went on about how cute the nurses were and mused about being a few years younger. In between raving about the women, he proclaimed,

“Shit, this wasn’t anything to worry about; I should have gotten it done years ago.”

Word got out that June’s Dad was higher than a kite on valium and talking.  Our room was filled with more nurses than his surgery deserved. My father regaled them with his plans for organ donation and how lucky the recipient would be after the transplant. 

Euphoric from surviving the medical procedure, his inhibitions blunted by a tranquilizer and a room full of women kept him talking through his two-hour observation period.  I wondered if I would ever be able to face my peers again. I got a picture of what my 72-year-old father must have been like in his early twenties, drunk and flirting.    

The operation was successful, and when he was able to take off the dark glasses, Dad was delighted with his vision. He talked about the joy of seeing things again and how he should have fixed his eyes a long time ago.  Mom would point out the number of battery chargers and the chainsaw that would still be with us today if he had gotten his eyes fixed sooner.