Teeter Totter

I think that's how you spell it.  It's one of those contraptions at the park that I dreaded to get on when there was someone else at the other end sitting on the ground.  My experience was that the other kid gleefully jumped off just as I managed to climb on the high part, sending me plummeting to the dirt.  When the other kid was a good kid, we went up and down and up and down and it was fun.  It was always very tricky getting off that thing, though.  You had to level it in the middle, then each get off very carefully - quite a tightwire act of low proportions.  

That's how I feel today. My brother and mother were up at the hospital for most of the day today, meeting with Hospice and then eventually speaking with my dad's doctor and a neurologist.  My dad signed the papers in the morning to go into Hospice, and he was all ready to get transferred, and then the doctor stepped in and decided to put the IV lines back in my dad, giving him drugs and nutrition, so he can see if there is more he can do for him.  He now wants yet another doctor to look into why he has a balloon in his stomach, why he is puking and why he is nauseous.  Mind you, there have been doctors for his heart, his blood pressure, the surgeon who did the bowel obstruction, the surgeon who took the stones out, an internist, a neurologist and now he wants a gastro guy to examine him (shortened it because I have no clue how to spell it).  

I don't know what to think.  They  are keeping my dad alive on tubes, which he specifically did not want, but he says he wants to live if you ask him.  I'm totally confused and my mother is beyond confused.  She's exhausted physically and emotionally and I really feel bad for her.  She wanted this all to end in a neat little box, by going to Hospice and making him as comfortable as possible.  She thought that's what was going to happen and she wanted that to happen, but the doctor isn't quite sure.  The interesting thing is that just yesterday that same doctor told Danny and I that we needed to think about options, such as Hospice, since he didn't think my father was capable of making a decision for himself and they were just keeping him alive.  Now he doesn't know??  I could say a lot of mean, sarcastic things at this point about doctors, but maybe it's not their fault.  After all, they are just practicing...

So my family and I are all crammed up on this teeter-totter on one end, and the medical establishment sits on the other end and we just glare at each other, wondering who will jump off first.  My dad lies in the middle, oblivious to it all, peacefully sleeping and no doubt hallucinating from the cocktail of drugs he's getting.  I know that feeling well, and I'm glad he can at least enjoy his sleep under these circumstances.