William Taylor Dickerson 1922-2020

My father died this afternoon, after a few days of very intense aspiration pneumonia, plus some related stuff cascading from it. He seemed to feel OK Monday morning, but by mid-afternoon was struggling to breathe. The caregiver called 911, I declared my quarantine over after 11 days (which I think meets the CDC standard but not the Massachusetts one), and got on a plane. My mother and I spent the night (and morning, and early afternoon) with him in the Emergency department. Had some very serious talks with doctors, and decided that if it came to it we would forego intubation and a few other very intrusive procedures, but would carry on with the antibiotics and high-flow O2. The palliative care people pulled some strings to get him into a pulmonary area, because usually the high-flow machine is only for the ER or ICU or special pulmonary cases. There were no beds in the ICU anyway. The usual policy for the main hospital is one visitor only, not even different people on different days, but at my request people pushed up four levels of the chain of command, as it were, to make it possible for me to bring my mother in to visit as well. There is no way she could have managed a visit on her own. He seemed to be a little better on Wednesday, but then was back to working incredibly hard to breathe yesterday, and that stayed true, despite the oxygen support. We were both there, holding his hands, when he stopped breathing altogether. He didn't seem to have been in pain, or even really awake since Tuesday. They kept treating him as a sick person almost to the end, giving the meds, bandaging an ongoing unrelated wound on his foot, etc. Then they took off one of the monitors, and left us to sit quietly. After he died we waited, while some sort of paperwork stuff happened, and we finally left.

I feel bad about it - he has had swallowing problems for many years. He had had the same type of pneumonia but mild enough that he was treated as an outpatient almost four years ago, and I guess we got cocky about not pureeing his food and so forth, although his beverages were thickened. The CT scan of his chest Monday night showed "debris" in his lungs, and then there were other complications. Sigh. Quality of life, and all - he would have been sad without regular food, as eating was his main fun thing at this point in his life. Things would be so different if they were not as they are.* I am grateful it wasn't Covid, so we could be with him so much.
This is clearly not a remembrance or obituary - just another "what I did this week" entry. Maybe the remembrance will be some other time. I am considering doing a eulogy on Youtube. My sister doesn't want to have Zoom memorial service, but wants to wait until it's safe for a congregation to be together. Not anytime soon, clearly.

I've been getting by on about six hours of sleep a day or less. Who knows if tonight will be better or worse?

* Anna Russell, from "How To Write Your Own Gilbert And Sullivan Opera."