My dad is of a generation and temperament that does not question doctors, so he does not quite know why he has been given an appointment to compile, with one of them, something called a collaborative care plan. “I’ve maybe just got that look about me,” he says as we walk down to the surgery. “What look?” I ask. “That look that says, ‘Bit daft. Can’t take care of himself.’”
“You’ve had that look for the last 50 years, Dad,” I point out. “It’s unlikely they’ve suddenly decided to take notice of it now.”
“Maybe they’ve met your mother,” he says. “And realised it’s time someone took care of me. Give me a few comfortable years and nice cups of tea before the sweet release of death.”
It turns out that Dad’s growing collection of age-related illnesses, aches and pains – more severe, I suspect, than we will ever know (see generation and temperament, above) – have reached a point at which he needs to be “empowered” to make some health and treatment decisions. And in collaboration – aha! – with people who actually know what health and treatment decisions he should be making.
A doctor younger than me is going through the questions with him. “Would you be prepared to make some lifestyle changes to improve your pulmonary and joint functionality?”
“Would I not,” asks Dad cautiously, “have to get a lifestyle first?”
“He means – would you do a bit more walking about and things like that,” I say.
“Ah. Nay, lad. It’s not for me. Not with my pulmonaries and joints.”
We go on, through his dietary intake, his medications, his home physio exercises (“I have a wife who takes care of none of that for me”) and sundry other items. “And in the event of a health crisis,” says the doctor, flipping to the last page of the questionnaire, “what would you like to happen?”
Dad sighs. “What are my options?”
“Well, it’s all about different degrees of intervention according to perceived likely outcomes.”
Dad looks at me. “Is this that do-not-resuscitate stuff?” “Yes,” I say.
“Oh, grand. Put ‘Do not resuscitate,’” he tells the doctor.
“Are you sure?” the doctor asks.
“Of course he’s sure,” I say. “Look at him. He’s barely suscitated now.”
“It’s just, we try not to put that until or unless people are much, much sicker than you are, Mr Mangan.”
“Well, can you put, ‘Thou shalt not kill – but thou needst not strive officiously to keep alive,’ as I believe Al Read said?”
“I can’t write that small,” says the doctor, unhappily.
Eventually we settle on “Do not resuscitate with enthusiasm.”
“That’ll do nicely,” says Dad. “I feel very empowered now. Very empowered indeed.”
Stocking filler
The free market does work! Not in the strictly economic sense – it falls down quite a bit there, it seems to my uneducated eye – but in the karmic.
No sooner does it give the world the unspeakable horror of the clip-on man bun than it redresses the moral balance by producing Golden Girls’ granny knickers. They’re big knickers screenprinted with the faces of Rose, Blanche, Dorothy and Sophia, the best sitcom quartet ever created. If your Christmas shopping is not now fully sorted, I’m afraid there is nothing more I can do.
Dabol trouble
This week I learned that the Papuan New Guinea pidgin for “bad situation” is “dabol bagarap”, pronounced “double buggerup”. I just thought I’d let you know. It may just possibly come in handy sometime.
