An update on my Father
Recently a handfull of people wrote me to ask how my father’s been doing. I generally don’t go on about my personal life much here, as it just doesn’t seem right for me to go on about my life in front of the Internet. But tonight I’ll make an exception.
It was an interesting day. Today for lunch I met a friend at Barone’s in Sherman Oaks. It’s probably my father’s favorite Italian place in the world and it’s been around for ages. It’s known for it’s ultra-thin crust, rectangular pizzas. They’re unbelievably good, although quite greasy. It was a good lunch, good conversation, but I kept flashing back to memories of going there with my parents when I was younger, or the surprise 65th birthday party we threw for my Dad 18 years ago. I have very distinct memories of my father one Saturday night getting a craving for Barone’s, so we ordered pizza, drove the 25 minutes from my child hood home there, picked up the pizza and drove all the way back. Yeah, he’d drive an hour round trip for take out for their pizza.
After I left I thought to myself, how ironic it would be if something bad were to happen to my Dad on this day of all days, sort of some kind of message from my Dad saying I shouldn’t go to Barone’s without him.
Sure enough, tonight my father was rushed to the hospital from his care center. His breathing was labored, to say the least. My father’s led a life long battle with asthma and was having a rather massive attack. There was concern early on that he may have pneumonia, too, but that turned out to be false, thankfully.
He’s been admitted and will stay there until things stabilize. He was much better when I left there late tonight.
My father’s current condition isn’t well. He’s never been in great health, but starting three months ago when he had surgery he began deteriorating rapidly. He was going in to renal failure, so the doctors did some surgery hoping they could slow the deterioration. It appears it did little good and probably hastened his condition. Following the surgery we believe he started having a multitude of minor strokes, generally unnoticeable, but the damage began to add up. He has his good days and bad days. Some days he’s pretty lucid, but those are the days he’s most sad as he realizes what’s going on around him. Other days he hallucinates a lot and suffers from a lot of dementia, but he’s generally happy on those days, imagining it’s 20, 30, sometimes 40 years earlier, a happier time.
This is an agonizing process and my heart goes out to anyone who’s gone through it. There’s nothing I can do but talk to him and hopefully occupy his mind a bit. Tonight, while we were in the ER waiting to be transferred, I told him how I had gone to Barone’s today and thought about all the good times we had there. It made him smile … it also made him hungry. I had planned on seeing him tonight and bringing him the left over pizza from lunch. Maybe I’ll bring it to him tomorrow.
I’m gonna stop now.
