"you'll have to be a lot quicker than that to bite me, daddy!"

While my dad was in the hospital there were times he had to be restrained. By restrained I mean they had to tie him down. A heartbreaking situation if ever there was one. There were moments of humor though that shine through the bad times.

The only time they would untie him was if I were physically in the room with him. Consequently I would sit there for days so he wouldn't have to be tied up. There were a couple of times I had to request the restraints to keep him from hurting himself. It was hard but it had to be done.

One time he was trying to pull his pic line out. (a pic line is a line surgically inserted into the artery to administer meds and such) To pull this line out could cause a deadly hemorhage. I was trying to physically hold his arms down until the nurses got there one day. He had already told me that "it won't hurt to pull it out, I've done it lots of time!".

As I was holding his arms he was actually snapping and gnashing at me with clenched teeth, trying to bite a chunk out of me in his desperation to pull out the offending pic line (in a neck artery). I was dodging his mouth as best I could when out of exasperation and exhaustion I told him, "Daddy, you'll have to be a lot quicker than that to bite me. I been dodging greyhounds for a lot of years now!"

He stopped trying to rip a piece out of my arm and looked at me and said, "I really wish you would stop comparing me to a dog!" For some reason it muched have reached a sane place inside him because he quit fighting me. Then the nurses came to tie him down and I left for some much needed rest because I couldn't bear to see him in that condition.