Jack has an attendant -- I could swear I heard somebody call her a baby sitter -- who is assigned to be on duty, somehow, 24 hours a day. But since there is supposed to be a lot of family and friends in attendance over the next few days, Ann figured it would be OK to give Anne Marie the days off during the holiday weekend.
Oops.
We got to The Forum around 9AM, and sat around watching "The Prince and Me" and "The Prince and Me II - The Royal Wedding" (what happened to Julia Stiles?) on TBS on the 46" TV that has somehow made all the moves from Jack's den to his apartment to assisted living to the hospice room.
Jack has some pretty serious bed-sores, so when we'd arrived at the room Ann and I rearranged everything, moving the bed in such a way that Jack could see the TV while lying more or less on his side. Then after about an hour of positively scintillating filmed entertainment, Ann decided to run an errand -- leaving me alone with the patient.
Did I say "oops"?
Ann had only been gone about 15 minutes before Jack announced "I have to pee."
Uh boy.
This meant retrieving a "potty chair" from the bathroom, setting it beside the bed, and then trying to help Jack get from the bed to the potty chair -- the longest journey of two feet I've ever endured.
Just getting Jack to sit upright was an ordeal, as he grimaced with every movement. I managed to get him to sit up, and then got him about half-way to the potty chair when the hole operation went straight to hell. I couldn't get him into the potty chair and I couldn't get him back to the bed.
There is a red call button, clipped to Jack's pillow. I pressed the button. Eternity passed and nobody answered the call. I kept trying to get Jack into the potty chair, to no avail. I pressed the red call button again. Another eternity passed. I felt something wet on my leg, and looking down could see that Jack didn't really need to use the potty chair any more, but my shorts are going to need washing.
I decided I needed to get Jack back in the bed, and get some help. The hard part in that proposition was getting him back in the bed. He just wasn't very flexible, and the best I could do was get him about half-way back in. I was afraid I was gonna run down the hall to the nurses station, and by the time I got back, find Jack lying on the floor.
"I have to get some help, Jack," I told him. "Will you be OK?" He seemed to think so. So I left him and ran down the hall to the nurse's station. There was exactly ONE person at the station. As I jogged back down the hall, she followed as slowly as I've ever seen a person move. I guess she'd been through this sort of thing before and didn't care to treat it like much of an emergency.
Anyway, the nurse finally got to the room, and together we managed to get Jack into the potty chair, and a minute or so later an actual orderly or male nurse finally showed up -- responding to the red-button call I'd pressed about ten minutes earlier.
He changed the sheets on Jack's bed, and got him back into what passes for a comfortable position for Jack. We watched some more television. Jack watched the prince and all of the pretty princesses.
"They'll all live happily ever after," Jack said, and then went back to sleep.
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