Stubborn Goats

My Dad had been sick for a couple of days with a nagging cough but it wasn't enough to stop him. On the Monday (February 7 1977) he had dragged himself into work feeling like dirt & hacking up gobs of pure goo. Four hours later, his best friend, Bob Barrow, had driven him home but first mentioned, “Should I stop by the hospital?” My Dad nixed that idea in a second. Big mistake.

The next Tuesday morning, I was headed out the door to go to school. I had turned and said “goodbye” to a 46 year old hunched over the kitchen table, wrapped up in a quilt, shivering and who took a few seconds to respond to me. “Oh,sure..see you later.”

I was later told that in three hours time, he pitched forward, slammed the kitchen table, knocking it over and Dad goes to heaven.

The coroner had listed cause of death as “bilateral bronchopneumonia.” My Mom's relatives, her two brothers, after hearing the symptoms, called it “walking pneumonia.” It's where you have pneumonia but you aren't sick enough to be stopped by it and you can still “walk around.” That until the last 12-24 hours when it ramps up like Godzilla and floods your chest with snot. You strangle in your own juices, so to speak. It's the same thing that took out Jim Henson of Muppet fame.

40 years later I had met with Bob Barrow at a Bugaboo Creek restaurant down by Route 6 in Seekonk, just to talk. He sort of berated himself for not being more forceful about getting Dad to the hospital. I tell him, “Bob, you would've had to drag him by his heels if you wanted him to go there.” That was true. My Dad once opined that “hospitals are where you CATCH sickness.” He was right in that nosocomial infections are rampart in hospitals, but when you are knocking on death's door, you have better go in and deal with that risk. The problem was that my Dad didn't think he was that far gone yet.

“Yeah...but still...” Bob responds. He wasn't letting himself off the hook yet. I could see that look on his face.

“Bob...he was a bull-headed, stubborn, relentless son of a bitch! He could be like that Terminator, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger! He wouldn't quit for nothing if he put his mind to it!”

“Yeah...you're right...he could be that!” Bob says, wryly smiling. 

 Dear Ol' Dad...at times. Click n Play

**

The first time I think, I had pneumonia, as I never went to a Dr, was back when I was 18. I had been hacking my lungs out for nearly three weeks and chalked that up to a stubborn chest cold. I can remember leaving the Clark building at Rhode Island College and had felt a need to hack up a pile of goo and when it was up, I spit it on the street. That's when I saw gobs of bright red blood mixed in.

“Uh oh” I thought to myself.

A day later, I'm sitting in a Bio chem lab review course when I started to see a thousand spots before my eyes. After a minute of so, the professor asks me “Are you ok?” I ask “Why?” and he said I was sweating like a pig. I felt my forehead and there it was, beads and beads of sweat. I tell him, “I'm ok..” and we go on with the class.

For some reason, two days later I felt better. I guess the thing had finally broken. No pills, no Dr...no nothing.

**

The other day, I had woke up, sat on the edge of the bed and wondered “My god, it seemed like I had a thousand dreams last night, all WEIRD.” I get up to hit the bathroom and when I get to the hallway, I lose my balance and pitch forward right into the cellar door...BAM!

I stumble into the bathroom, then try like hell to keep that piss stream centered in the bowl and doing poorly. “Why am I swaying?” I think.

The rest of the morning had me walking like a I had muscular dystrophy. Now this didn't alarm me too much. I always need a good 15 minutes to “get my legs back” after sleeping. I guess it's part of aging for me.

After trying to go to work and being told “you look like you've been dead three weeks” I go home and mull over should I see a Dr. There's a clinic not too far from me and the thought of waiting two and half hours with all those others who are infected didn't encourage me at all.

What got me to go, was that I was sort of feeling OK 12 hours ago. 12 hours had gone by and now I felt like a clubbed baby seal. Gee...who else did I know felt the same way nearly 40 years ago?

I go, regretting it all the way. Of course, the place is full. There are two kids spraying snot as they sneeze and cough. Another guy has his hand bandaged up after shooting a nail through it from a nail gun. A young woman comes in, hobbling because she fell down some stairs, really screwing up her ankle. How do I know this? Because I'm really awful about listening in on other's conversations. I was seated right close by the receptionist! HIPPA laws? Pffffht! Not when I'm within earshot!

I go into the exam room and to my luck, there's there is this very pretty, but dead serious, woman Dr. I wonder if every guy closes his eyes, leans back a bit, when these female practitioners grasp your neck to feel for swelling and the such? I do. Perhaps i'm a pig is all.

She tells me from all the symptoms I'm displaying that I have a real good dose of bronchitis. The bronchial tubes in me are all clogged up with snot and pus. Not only that, but they're all constricted as well, reacting to the bacteria. I ask “why do I feel so awful” and she opines, due to the tests, that the lower lobes of my lungs are probably filling with some fluid. “A minor touch of pneumonia, I bet it is...it can explain why your O2 saturation isn't what it should be.”

“A minor touch.” I don't want to know what a major touch would feel like.

“Can it happen this fast? I felt OK 12 hours earlier. How could I get so miserable so fast?”

“I see it all the time” she tells me. “Bronchitis or other lung infections, in some people, and apparently YOU, can move that fast.”

Great! Thanks for the genetics, Dad!

**

To tell you the truth, my brother and I were at discords with our own Dad growing up, I more so. Ken and I would swear to All That was Holy we wouldn't “turn into him...or at least not adopt his worst aspects.”

There have been countless times I refused to see a Dr over various minor medical problems. Cut my hand open? Duct tape works wonders! Break my toe? Then do nothing as nothing could be done. Hobble for two months and deal with the pain. Life won't stop because my foot is hurting. A screaming hot toothache? I blew them off for weeks, convinced I could manage the pain...till I couldn't.

It has been pointed out to me, by various people who don't know one another, about some issue I feel strongly about and proudly so, that I say:

"I'M RIGHT!

Gee, who else did I know that used to say that? Who else did I know could be single-minded when he got on a tear?

I'm not my Dad, but did I ever adopt some of his ways! The trick here is knowing when to go balls to the wall, and when not too...