Dad - Hospital and Problems

November 2007: It has been a long time since posting. Was called by the hospital in Roxboro that Dad had fallen in the back yard, had been seen by someone from the National Guard Armory, had been taken to the Roxboro Hospital by the EMT team, and asked what I wanted to do... After a lot ot thinking and some discussions with Sonny and Carolyn, the decision was made to take him to the hospital at Duke. He was admitted and we (Carloyn, Sonny and I) spent the first week of November driving from our jobs to the hospital to sit with him... He seemed to progress well and at the end of the week, Duke Hospital released him to go back to an assisted living facility. We considered several but decided on the Roxboro Nursing Home since it was in the same town and since his next door neighbor, Mrs Crabtree, had recently moved in the same home. Dad did not want to go to assisted living and it took a lot of convincing. I picked him up at Duke and drove him to Roxboro, by Mom's grave site for a few, last minutes of togetherness , by the house for a very short visit ("to make sure everything was okay"), and then to the nursing home. He seemed fine when I left, but the home called later to say he wanted to leave. Went back to the nursing home that weekend to spend some time with him and convince him that for the near future he had to stay at the home. Meanwhile, I was looking in to the Veterans Home in Salisbury, thinking it might be better for him to be with fellow veterans. Early on Saturday, December 1, we got a phone call that Dad had a suffered a serious stroke early that morning. Chris and I drove over to be with him - he was unconscious with no reactions to touches. The Roxboro Hospital advised that Duke would be a better place for him to recover if that was a possibility at all, so we had him transferred to Duke that afternoon. Visited with Dad on Sunday at Duke, and as before no reactions... On Friday of that week, Sonny, Carolyn and I met with the medical staff to be advised that he would not recover from his stroke and would have to be fed through a tube for the remainder of his life. We made the very difficult decision to have the tube removed, and then have him transferred back to the Roxboro Nursing Home for his last days... Chris and I went over the following Saturday to spend some time with him. Dad passed away early on Sunday morning, December 9th, and we decided to have the funeral on Sunday, December 16th. Lots of friends, family and Rangers from Ft. Bragg attended. A tremendous loss for me, Sonny and Carolyn...