I didn’t think twice. When my youngest brother, Eric, informed me in September last year that our father was going to have an angioplasty I immediately wrote to VSO India and VSO Bahaginan that I wanted to come home. Eric said I needed not come home because it was not a very difficult procedure. I missed my son’s appendectomy last May; though I wanted badly to be with him but it was my son who assured me he’d be okay. My dad’s was different. He was 83 at the time and it was going to be his first time to go under the knife.
He’s been confined in the hospital ICU for two days before I was informed. My family is perhaps the calmest people I know, there’s always grace under pressure. I could sense that they were all anxious but wouldn’t try to infect me with the anxiety, when I spoke to them they just told me dad was sleeping or resting, and all. I didn’t get to talk to my dad, and I asked them not to tell him just yet because I still had to get exit permit from the immigration office. Before I even got permit another message from my brother came, dad’s doctors found 8 blocked vessels and had to go through coronary bypass surgery instead. I still haven’t spoken to my dad. After 4 days I flew back to Manila and went directly to the hospital. My entire family and my closest relatives were there.
Dad had already undergone the surgery and was under critical observation for complication in his kidneys in the ICU. He was awake but could hardly talk nor move with numerous tubes and apparatuses attached to his frail body. One thing my family was thankful for at the time was that he remained lucid. He recognized me right away when my mom asked who was standing beside him. With all his weakened might he burbled, “Len”. I looked around him and he’s got 4 monitors each serving a different purpose. It was daunting, I could not grasp the numbers on the monitors. My dad looked so delicate, but I felt in my heart he was going to stay with us for a while longer.
A couple of days later it was my turn to stay with dad 24/7. My mom came to hospital everyday but we didn’t let her stay overnight so she could sleep better at home. Filipinos are family-oriented that it is second nature when children have grown to take care of the parents, especially when they are sick. But it is also because there is always a shortage of doctors and nurses that families have to take care of their patients. Nurses are called only on exceptional situations. Dad’s doctors were very attentive to him however. His nurses loved him because he was very cooperative, they loved him to get better and they saw his will to do just that. And in spite of being very weak he made the nurses laugh. If dad weren’t a psychiatrist he could have been a comedian who could tell the same joke over and over and you’d still laugh. He competed with comic blabbers of my younger sister, Phobel, and chuckled at the simple note we told him was written in a get-well-soon card by his junior son (my sibling who wouldn’t say any affectionate word but would express love in many other ways). The note said, “Dad, Hmmm. Jon”
During the first two days that I was with him I saw his condition improved. One at a time tubes were removed and monitors shut down. He was eating well, he started craving for his favorite foods. My brother, Lamcel, brought him crispy pata (pork knuckles deep-fried to a crisp), he also started drinking coffee again. He asked for Coke, the nurse said I could give him just before his dialysis late in the night. Unfortunately, Lamcel found the Coke and drank it, not knowing I saved it for Dad. Then his cardiologist came and made him sit up with help from a nurse, me and my elder sister, Ched. On my third day with him, soon after his final dialysis he was transferred to the recovery room. Hopes leapt high because the doctor was talking about discharging him in three or four days. The doctor said his heart was very strong.
In the recovery room we watched TV together, I read him the newspaper, I told him about my life in India. Dad has let so many opportunities pass to go out of the country during his heydays as director of a mental hospital. As I said, there was shortage of doctors, and there was bigger shortage for psychiatrists; he was the lone full-time doctor in the government mental hospital for many years that he couldn’t just abandon his patients. So he was okay. He had coffee again and he had healthy appetite, ate more and more of the hospital food. My nieces, daughters of his favorite brother, came to visit. My youngest brother and I were chatting with them while constantly massaging dad’s legs. Dad would butt in our conversation when we thought he was asleep.
Dad was in a windowless room, he couldn’t tell day from night. I went to the nurse’s station and asked for a room with a view. I asked his cardiologist if I could put him on a wheelchair and we’d go out of his room so he could see sunlight. The doc was okay with it. He was looking forward to that.
But that night, he talked incoherently. My sister and I took turns attending to him. During my turn I dared not even blink my eyes lest I missed if he wanted something. In the middle of the night he wanted to get up, he said he was hungry. I made him a glass of milk and gave him cookies, then he wanted to sit up, then he wanted to go to the bathroom by himself despite the catheter attached to him.
The day that followed was very trying for all of us. I didn’t tell you that all those times he had bad cough and he had difficulty expectorating. A nurse came on a regular interval for his nebulization. Though an ordeal dad always tried to cooperate, but everytime a tube was inserted in his mouth down to his throat to spray some solution he cringed with pain.
Later that day he asked for all of us, he said he wanted to say goodbye because he was already tired. Eric and I were there. We both told him that our only problem was his cough. Eric, who is a doctor, told him he would do the nebulization himself, “I will make you well, Dad.” While I told him not to give up, that I came back from India to take care of him, that I would be there and stick it out with him. He succumbed to us, Eric asked for the permission of the hospital to allow him treat my dad. I and Phobel assisted him.
Dad wasn’t the type who would want to be a burden to anyone. Little did all of us know that so much thick mucus has already accumulated in his lungs that it became very difficult for him to breathe and oxygen was no longer reaching his brain. When all of us were there, mom, siblings, sisters-in-law, future brother-in-law, grandchildren, he went into deep sleep, so deep that Lamcel, who is also doctor himself, found odd. A doctor came and then the next thing we knew we were all back to where we started, waiting just outside the ICU.
Once again dad had so many tubes attached to him, monitors lit up anew. I looked at him and my heart bled. His breathing was belabored even with aid of an oxygen tank. I knew then that we were just counting days. But the doctors and nurses didn’t want to give up on him. We didn’t want to give up on him. And he didn’t want to give up on us. For few more days he stayed with us, he woke up and struggled and fought to live. Relatives and friends came to visit, though already enervated he tried to smile at the visitors. And if he could talk I’m sure he would crack another joke.
I realized that since I came home I was wearing surgical mask because of my cough and cold. I asked dad if he’s seen my face since I arrived. He shook his head, I took off my mask and he strained to look at me. I waved at him and smiled, he just kept staring, and then I put the mask back on. It was my turn to take care of him again, I sang to him songs he played in the piano, he looked at me and I knew he liked it. Trouble was, I didn’t know the complete lyrics, he gripped my hand each time I paused to think of the next line, I hummed every time I missed the right words.
Days became two weeks, he was drifting on and off. The lead doctor still wouldn’t give up on him. He said dad’s a rare case, his heart was very strong. He had an arrest, doctors revived him. Again, all of us were there, mom, siblings, sisters-in-law, future brother-in-law, grandchildren. It was time to begin accepting the fact that dad was going to leave us very soon. One by one we talked to him and said our goodbyes. I don’t know what others said, but I thanked him that I am his daughter and that I am proud he is my father. I was with him when he was last seen awake, I sang him songs, I told him more about India. And even if I am an atheist, I told him that there are millions of gods in India and my colleagues prayed for him, Hindu, Christians and Muslim, “imagine that dad, gods from different religions have already blessed you because you don’t have just a strong heart, you have a very good, and kind and compassionate heart.”
Those were the last words I had for him, I didn’t know if he heard me but I know that he knew I was and am very proud of him, that he continues to be my inspiration now that I am back in India to complete my placement.
P.S. Dad said before his operation that he would have steak when he got out of the hospital, but he couldn't anymore. He knew that "in heaven there is no beer," I hope they have steak there, at least.
