Rock hunting

One of the most miraculous things about spending this time with my father is the power of his brain.

At this point, he is accessing areas of the brain that have been on 'hold' for some time. Memories from his childhood, from my childhood, seem like they are just minutes old.

I recall last week the moment when my father was moving his hands while he was not very conscious. He had his hands in front of him and he mumbled "I want to cut this rock."

I leaned in and said "What rock are you talking about?"

He spoke, without opening his eyes, and smoothed one hand over an invisible rock held in is stationary hand and said "I found this rock and want to cut it so I can see the cross section of it."

He proceeded to go back into silence.

My father used to be a rock hound, a hunter of rocks and gems with his father. When I was a young child, before my grandfather passed, I remember looking forward to visiting the trailer park where they lived and having both my father and his father show me some of their amazing finds; poppy jasper, thunder eggs, the list was seemingly endless.

Today I returned to San Jose.

Like the previous times before, I received a call of some bad news. My father is deteriorating quickly.

He has not eaten today, as his throat is hurting more than ever before. He complained of having difficulty breathing, which is another step we knew would occur. He is on 5 litres of Oxygen up from his standard 2 and is still having difficulty.

His pain level spiked to a high level. Now we're at 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. This is new.

I had been in contact with my mother and with hospice and we tried a few adjustments in hopes of managing the pain better.

Then, this afternoon, the social worker from hospice said "You need to be a squeaky wheel."

This was all I needed to get the ball rolling and up the baseline pain medication. If by tomorrow he is feeling pain, we'll push for even more pain medication.

I was able to take some photos this afternoon. Living with an amazing photographer means that I feel a need to capture images in a way that shows what I might be seeing from my own perspective.