The Popsicle Plan

Narcotics and men in their seventies do not mix.

On the evening of Dad's surgery (a couple of weeks ago) I was sitting with him after everyone else went home. His mouth was dry and he wanted a drink! He was getting a morphine drip in an epidural as well as having morphine in a patient-controled pump.

Having spent months with eating difficulties, he had heard repeatedly from the doctor that popsicles would help keep him from dehydrating. The doctor had told him to eat popsicles. Yes, the doctor had told him that ... the previous week. But nobody would give him a drink, and the only reason given was simply because it was a mere 8 hours after a humongous surgery.

So, the nurses were out at the nurses' station. Mom was gone. My brother and sister were gone. And Dad had a plan. He told me where I could obtain the popsicles for the patients, out in the hallway, near the coffee machines. He told me where the paper towels were, and that he would need several of them to wrap around the stick of the popsicle so as to keep the sticky drips off his hands. He told me where the towels were stored in the room, and that I needed to lay a towel on his chest so that popsicle drips would go on the towel instead of on his hospital gown. Then we would hide the towel in the bottom of the dirty-linen hamper, so the nurse would never know what we'd been up to.

He had a really well-thought-out plan. A sneaky scheme! And this was a guy doped up on morphine? Somehow, he couldn't understand that he wasn't ready to eat yet. But the rest of the Popsicle Plan was flawless.

If only he had a daughter who would help him execute his schemes instead of hauling the nurse into the room!