In March, my father had another stroke.
Stubborn by nature, he had not checked in with his primary care doctor for almost a year leading up to the stroke and had not been taking his heart and high blood pressure medication regularly. He had some difficulty walking, and a fall from late 2013 still affected him. But he lived independently.
I remember the day, it was last year, when he told me his ex-wife passed away. I later learned it was around the time he stopped taking his medication. Apparently, he knew her when they were young, in Shanghai, and I think she was the love of his life.
He was calm and clear about how it happened, he showed no emotion, but talked in a soft tone. I almost cried, and wanted to embrace him, but hugging is not something my father and I did regularly. That may sound harsh and cold. And he was.
For most of my life, until I graduated from college and began working my way into a jounalism career, I did not speak with my father often. It was easier not to. Eventually, the rage and disappointment gave way to acceptance and forgiveness. There were occasional lunches and dinners before the stroke. But ours is still a complicated relationship.
Since March, I have debated if I should share what has been happening with him, and by extension, with me, and my past. And my family’s past. There is much we have not said to each other about a difficult upbringing that included frequent fights between my parents and a divorce after he left our home to live with another woman.
I know we wasted an enormous amount of time blaming and ignoring him. Of course, I understand I cannot change the past, but I am keenly aware of the hurt that lingers. I feel as if I have been keeping a secret, and now, I am letting some of you in on it.
Since March, I have debated if I should share what has been happening with him, and by extension, with me, and my past. And my family’s past. There is much we have not said to each other about a difficult upbringing that included frequent fights between my parents and a divorce after he left our home to live with another woman.
Writing is usually therapeutic, but it also means experiencing the hurt all over again. I have started and stopped various drafts about my experience with hospital and nursing facility staff; about researching different types of strokes, nursing homes and about recovery from a stroke; and possible places for him to receive electrical stimulation on his throat to help him swallow and possibly, speak again.
He has not uttered a word since March. It is ironic, given how much he yelled and enforced his will verbally when we were growing up.
My father is Chinese, hence my last name, which means “heart” and has a silent “H”; my mother is Mexican. They came to the U.S. in the late 60s, if I’m not mistaken, met in Los Angeles and married in the early 70s.
It was made clear to me by both parents that my gender meant there were certain things I could and could not do, despite having really good grades and being a pretty responsible kid. My father was stern and demanding, and he was the undisputed head of the household. Unlike many of my Latino friends’ fathers growing up, he cooked, often.
He also constantly tinkered with the old cars that sat in our driveway. I like driving through the city and enjoy road trips, probably because of the many Sundays we spent travelling to what seemed like distant cities in his 1963, banged up, white Chevy Impala.
I enjoy shopping for groceries in downtown L.A.’s Chinatown because we spent so much time dining and buying the proper ingredients for dinner there. I am independent and stubborn, like him. But he did not teach us his language, and I will likely forever be an outsider in that world. I do speak Spanish, quite well, and can still have a simple conversation in French.
All of this played in my head as there was a point after the stroke when the doctors did not think my father would make it. I decided to traverse the city to see him, and thought about the countless times we drove down Wilshire Boulevard.
I now lived walking distance from this major street. It was my route to the subway, and the first part of my journey to his bedside. I hopped on the subway from my Koreatown apartment and transferred to a bus that would take me from downtown L.A. to the hospital in Alhambra.
Driving there, without traffic, would take about 30 minutes.
But that was not a drive I wanted to make on my scooter.
I now lived walking distance from this major street. It was my route to the subway, and the first part of my journey to his bedside. I hopped on the subway from my Koreatown apartment and transferred to a bus that would take me from downtown L.A. to the hospital in Alhambra.
I felt I needed to tell him that I forgave him, and that I would help him if he wanted me to. I started writing a story on the bus, on my phone, and I remember passing one of his favorite restaurants at Garvey Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard in Monterey Park.
By the time I got to the hospital, my nose was puffy and my eyes were red. My father opened his eyes when I called to him, and once the nurse left the room, I began to say what I wanted to say. He began to shake, and his face contorted, but I don’t think he made any noise. Tears began to stream down his face. He was crying.
I was relieved he could understand, but then I felt badly for upsetting him. I took him by the hand and told him it was OK, that there was still time, including time for him to teach me Mandarin. (I studied Mandarin for a semester and I barely passed. My pronunciation is apparently horrible. When I called my dad one day to tell him I was taking the class, I said something to him in Mandarin and he asked me to repeat it. After a few more attempts and he still couldn’t understand what I was saying, he said I should just tell him in English.) I also told him that it was up to him, and how much effort he was willing to put into his recovery.
The last week has been pretty difficult, for me and for him, as he had just returned from an 11-day hospital stay due to pneumonia. It’s likely his own saliva went down the wrong pipe and into his lungs. He was receiving great care at Glendale Adventist Hospital, and the speech therapist there was using electrical stimulation on his throat.
After some initial frustration, and a visit by me during a session with his therapist, my father began to swallow various types of liquids and gooey substances. He would need several months of this before we would see real progress, but because his pneumonia was on the mend and his lungs were clear, he was discharged back to the nursing facility.
I don’t have any real complaints about the care at the nursing facility, but unfortunately, they do not offer vital stimulation for his throat during speech therapy.
I’ve spent almost a week looking into how to make this happen for him off site. Insurance is never easy, but I was able to speak with a live person after several messages and being routed to various departments, and she will let me know how and if therapy away from the nursing facility will happen. (If you’re curious, this is the link for what I’m looking into).
My emotional state was already shaky, and I was looking forward to attending the first-ever Laguna Film Festival in Orange County. The first short documentary, called “Alzheimer’s: A Love Story,” broke my heart into even more pieces. The film opens with two men, one sitting in a wheelchair with a homemade birthday cake in his lap that the other man is holding. The man’s head droops forward as he sits in the wheelchair. The other man is trying to get him to sing or blow out the candle. We later learn the man in the wheelchair is in a special treatment facility for Alzheimer’s Disease and the other man is his partner of more than 40 years.
The man in the wheelchair immediately reminded me of my father.
My father still has difficulty holding his head up, among a laundry list of other ailments. A tube connects to his stomach from a machine that feeds him liquid nutrients. I was told early on that one of the most important things in recovery is a person’s ability to eat solid food again.
While he has made progress, it is his continued inability to swallow, and speak, that has me worried. He remains at a high risk for pneumonia because he still cannot swallow. I also wonder if seven months after the stroke, he has tired of fighting.
While he has made progress, it is his continued inability to swallow, and speak, that has me worried. He remains at a high risk for pneumonia because he still cannot swallow. I also wonder if seven months after the stroke, he has tired of fighting.
I can only wonder what thoughts are locked inside his head. While he can nod or blink his eyes for “yes,” and shake his head for “no,” he often refuses to answer. He will simply stare back when you ask him a question or look away. I have attempted to have him spell out words to me, but most of the time he has refused.
At the hospital, he did hold a pen and attempt to spell “yes,” but he lacks control. I was going to see if he could touch the screen on my tablet to spell during my last visit, but he was too tired to wake from his sleep. Apparently, he had been rather active the day before, and it was the same week he returned from the hospital.
Tomorrow my father has an acupuncture appointment, and electrical stimulation is now part of his physical therapy. That therapist will be using electrical stimulation on his shoulders and neck, to help him with head control, and by extension, possibly with swallowing. Cross your fingers.
The couple on the left in the photo are my godparents. My parents stand next to them, and my father is on the right.
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