He wanted to go home.

That’s what my dad asked of us every day, sometimes screaming, often begging. Before he fell into a coma at the hospice, he was asking to go back home — but there kept being obstacles. First he didn’t go home because he was in rehab for his stroke. Everyone told him, just wait, once you recover more you’ll get to go home. I’m not sure if they really believed it, if his progress actually showed that going home to a regular life was possible. Or if they were just pressured by Medicare to have the sunniest view possible in order to discharge him when they stopped paying.

After he woke up from heavy sedation in which he likely had a second stroke, the neurologist somberly said to my mom that we needed to prepare ourselves, asking if my dad had a DNR. But he didn’t die. Instead, the stroke was so massive -but not fatal- that they talked about sending him to a long term acute care facility, where he’d need significant medical care to just maintain his condition. Then he remarkably started to recover ever so slightly more and the discussion was him going to a skilled nursing facility — still there wasn’t a sense that he’d recover remarkably, but that he’d need less medical care and eventually be able to transition home. And then he was deemed as having even more potential, finally going into an intense rehab facility. This is where he really begged to go home from, the 5 day a week, 3 hour a day rehab stressing…