Habit

My father is a creature of habit. So much so that when he was in the hospital last winter, he suffered because he was out of his routine. I watched him physically and mentally decline because he couldn't follow his daily activities in the order or manner in which he does them every day. 

I'm not kidding you when I say he appeared to age 10 years in 5 days. His mental capacity declined. His already compromised mobility nose-dived as he remained bed-bound and then chair-bound during his brief stay.

When I say his mental capacity declined, I offer to you a low-key argument we had because he was convinced he'd been in the hospital since Thursday and refused to believe me that it was actually Friday when he was admitted. He got sullen with me when I showed him my phone with the date and time of the phone call he made to me when he thought he needed to go to the emergency room. Later, he continued to press the point that he'd been there since Thursday and I had to just let it go. Sometimes the argument is pointless.

When he was finally released, he was supplied with home health visits for an indefinite number of weeks. At first this seemed like a good idea because he was so pitifully shrunken from the man he was when the EMTs took him to the emergency room. He sat slumped in his chair, doing this weird swiping thing with his tongue, his eyes all watery and weepy. He was a little boy trapped in an old man's body and he felt helpless and angry - the only emotion he's ever really been comfortable with.

I had to choose between catering to his self-pity or forcing him to buck up. My father, the youngest of a highly, but quietly dysfunctional family, has always been a bit of a big baby and he is terrified of death. He can't abide the slightest discomfort. I mean, a small belly-ache launches him into the bathroom where he stands over the toilet sticking his fingers down his throat to make himself vomit in order to feel better. Usually it doesn't work. There have been times when he has called me in the middle of the night asking me to take him to the emergency room because his tummy hurts. Thankfully, I can usually talk him through it and avoid the trip to the hospital.

I chose tough love. I told him that if he didn't pull himself out of this tailspin, we'd have to consider other living arrangements. I got a little shouty and told him that this was not who he is. He looked like that old man John, my great-grandfather, sitting in recliner, leaning on a cane, smelling like pee.

That did the trick. The next day he asked me to go with him so he could get out and drive to see what his level of independence was. He drove and to this day, we've never revisited that day in his kitchen when I had to shout.

By the second home health visit, my father was complaining to me that he didn't need the help, the nurses weren't doing anything he couldn't do himself, and it was confusing to have the different people with different responsibilities running in and out of the house, setting appointments without his input, giving him a time between 8am and noon for one person on one day and between 1 and 3 pm on a different day.

In essence, even though he was home, his routine was still not established. He was at the mercy of all these other people and their schedules. It wasn't sitting well with him.

After the third week, he'd dismissed the whole team. He got back to his routine and while he's still aging, still sticking his fingers down his throat, still asking me what to believe on social media, still terrified of dying, and getting confused a little more each week, he is, in the grand scheme of things, doing okay. 

The apple doesn't far from the tree. I see patterns in my own life where a disrupted routine can throw me in to a tailspin. A food tailspin. A workaholic tailspin. A lack of self-care tailspin. And low-grade depressions. It's not lost on me that I was able to deal with diabetes without medication by sticking to a strict, self-imposed routine. I've staved off depression and bad decisions, by having routines in different eras of my life. 

Changing my work routine was a big upset that I didn't fully acknowledge, and now that I feel like I have a bit of a handle on what is required and what will help this organization address its concerns, I can sense a new routine ready to take shape.

And that gives me comfort.