You know, it's funny, but I really don't remember. It certainly wasn't anything profound or touching.
Dad went into the VA for a routine exam and never made it back out. They tried to implant a pacemaker, but it did not go well. He came out of the anesthetic and went completely nuts-- completely bat$hit crazy. He was howling at the moon, talking to the man in the ceiling, and muttering things about the cat in the wall. He was constantly trying to rip out his IV lines and rip at his incision, so they had to tie him in the bed.
Over a week, that gradually went away. He started to appear more normal. He made time with the nurses. He joked with me and Mom. However, they could not get his fluid levels right. He eventually suffered a complete breakdown and died.
I remember one of the last things I said to him where he was up and relatively normal was " When we get out of this, we're all going to have such a laugh!" The rest was just mundane small talk. He was able to see his boyhood neighborhood from the window of his room.
Shortly after that, he became unresponsive overnight. He never regained consciousness. I took Mom home on Sunday afternoon, and we stopped by a local rehab facility to check it out. If he made it out of the hospital we were looking at months of slow rehab. Afterward we went back to the house. The family gathered for dinner. We were all watching the Packers and Vikings when the call came.
Sad to here that the VA hospital killed your Dad too.
I wonder how many Dad's go to that damned cancer of an institution for a routine examine and come out dead or the drugs and their treatments kill them?
