Not A Good Duck Day

Top: Duck in 1957 on a fishing trip to Canada with friends. Bottom: 1986 at the open house at Cable Street just after we moved in.

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Try this: Firebrand Playlist: funny, funny...... Duck: Not good. Me: Vastly better. G: Really bad jokes when he got home. The Internet et al: OD down, most Blackberry functions down, and Verizon was down. Blogger very slow. Worst of all, there’s a Valentine’s Day worm. Don’t open Valentines Day card attachments from anyone you don’t know, please.

He did not have a good day. We knew that he was going to see his dermatologist yesterday, but we did not know that anything beyond a checkup would happen. By the time we got to the nursing home just before his dinner, he was fragmented and not doing well at all.

He was shaking. He always shakes. This afternoon for the first time he was shaking so badly that he could not eat his dinner. He did not remember that he had gone to the doctor. He did not know he had surgery nor realize there was a large bandage on the side of his neck.

G went off to find out what had happened at the doctor’s office, and he came back to tell us all that Duck had a nodule removed. There will be a biopsy, and we will know what it is in a week or so. Duck didn’t understand.

He made a faint “my dog Plaid” joke or two. He commented that the doctor had a nice dog that he petted, but was clearly less himself at all than usual. When he told us he was very thirsty, G was able to find only a small plastic cup for water. Duck’s grip collapsed the cup. When the food arrived, his shaking scattered the sandwich everywhere. G took over and hand fed him bite by bite until he said he didn’t want any more. We took him back to his room.

I stopped a moment and talked with his RN. It’s only old age, she said. But it wasn’t. He fell on his bed like a stone and was unable to move. Fully dressed, he laid there saying he didn’t want anything. G talked to the nurse, and she pulled his chart. We kept saying that something more was wrong. An anesthetic reaction, a reaction to the surgery he didn’t understand. Something.

He was on 72 hour watch, and after calling there this morning we find they did watch him. His symptoms of the previous day are gone, and he is in good spirits. They feel it must have been a reaction to the surgery yesterday.