rekkidblogga

Life is good

My mother, father and I waited two and a half hours in the doctor's office today, leaving with no more of an answer on why my father has dropped down to 114 pounds and has no appetite.

We know he has a small gallstone. We know he has COPD and severe emphysema, which is being treated. We know he has always been thin and has never been a big eater, but we know that never has he been this gaunt. We know that if he had surgery to remove the gallstone, he might end up on a ventilator for life and we know that we might have to worry about post-op complications from pneumonia. We know he is an extremely high-risk anesthesia patient because his lungs are in such bad shape thanks to decades of smoking and we know that something is making him not want to eat. We know that something must be done medically to reverse this condition.

Looking at my mother, who'd been crying earlier in the day when my father and I weren't home, her eyes red, puffy and swollen with circles down to there, I thought that while she looked pretty in the light olive green "Life Is Good" t-shirt with the tiny blue and yellow flip-flops on the front that I'd bought her on my last vacation in Florida, the message bore something of a bittersweet irony on this particular day.

posted by rekkidbraka @ 8:36 PM