Question marks in the air

Does this sound like a really good idea?

Some of you remember my father-in-law's health problems from this past spring. He had a bad case of pneumonia that put him in the hospital, and he lost some of his heart function.

He had been seeing the doctors in Marshfield, Wis., who considered doing open-heart surgery on him. Then they decided not to, deciding it would just be too risky on a 78-year-old man who is not in good health. They feared he might die on the table.

In the last month or two, he has been seeing a different doctor, in Eau Claire, Wis. And what do you know? The new doctor wants to go ahead with the heart surgery. It has been scheduled for next Monday, Dec. 17.

My wife tells me they plan to (A) wrap (not remove) an aneurysm in his chest with something--the aneurysm has been there for years, and he had done nothing about it; (B) do one heart bypass--the one that will do him the most good (he needs five); and (C) repair/replace (my wife isn't sure; we're getting all this second or third-hand) one of his heart valves.

Frankly, my wife is rather dubious about the operation, as I am. She thinks his new doctor has talked/persuaded him into the operation. But the decision is totally out of our hands.

My wife, who told me earlier that she doubts he will make it through the winter, now wonders whether he will ever leave the hospital--he'll have to stay there three weeks or so after the surgery.

I think you can see we are both being "realistic" in our expectations. I hope the rest of the family is, too. They are planning a get-together at his place this weekend (just before the operation) and asked if we could come. We can't--both of us are too busy with work. We'll phone him instead.

At our weekly staff meeting yesterday, I told the others what is going on and warned that we may have to make a sudden trip to NW Wisconsin. If the operation goes well, we may visit him at the Eau Claire hospital around New Year's.

If it doesn't go well ... then I guess we'll be going over there, anyway.

And let's be honest here. His wife died in 2002, and he has been missing her ever since. He continued to live at their house along the Chippewa River, but he really seemed to lose the zest he had for living.

The last time we saw him was three months ago, over the Labor Day weekend, when the main focus was [URL="http://drdog.efx2blogs.com/5226/Guns+and+woodpiles.html"]filling his basement with firewood[/URL] for the long, long winter. The next several winters, in fact.

My wife is the oldest of eight children. The kids all look up to him, and many of them live near him. Which is strange, I think, because they were all raised in a little town north of Milwaukee. I was raised in a nearby suburb; I met my future wife via a high school classmate who worked at the same store as her. We met through a blind date, and I guess we hit it off.

She was the first of the eight to leave the nest, and most of the others (5 of the 8) wound up living near their parents, following them to NW Wisconsin. All have left the nest, but he seems the focus of their lives. When we visit, they're always calling him on the phone or popping over to visit. They seem to depend on his opinion about this and that. He doesn't get lonely--except for his wife, and nothing but death will be able to resolve that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when he passes, it's going to hit many of them quite hard. My wife, frankly, not that much. She phones him, but only every two or three weeks. The rest of "keeping in touch" is by e-mails or phone calls with her sisters. When I give her the option of visiting him when we're in the region (such as when we're driving past on our way to the Twin Cities--last summer's vacation, for instance, or my aunt's funeral last January), she often opts not to.

My wife and I talked a few weeks ago, before the surgery was planned: Are we going to visit her dad and siblings over the holidays, as we have done in the past? The decision was no; she'd rather stay around here. Then the surgery was planned, and we are now making tentative plans depending on what happens.

It's just one of many things that are hanging fire in my life: how long my mom will live (though her arrangements, including the funeral, are already set); when her house will sell; how long her dad will live; how long our cats will live--both are nearly 16 years old now, so they are getting to be elderly felines.

All those are question marks as 2007 draws to a close.