This is kinda awesome, really.
I guess if you don’t ask, you’ll never know. Nice job, kid.
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Collaboration: it’s a human thing, and nice to see when it appears from out of nowhere.
With everything that is going on, it’s nice to see something that puts a smile on your face.
Extremely awesome. And as Billy notes, the kid’s got chops.
That young fellow is good. Damn good. He hears the music.
You see this sort of thing occasionally, where a nervous kid goes up on stage and manages to hold his own pretty well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where the kid comes up and absolutely smashes it like that.
Greetings:
Admittedly, bashfulness is not a New York concept. And that was the best bit of musical fun I’ve seen since “Gangnam Style” came down the ‘pike.
Carpe all your diems.
Forgive me for threadjacking, but I was hoping to crowdsource some advice.
Last Thursday, my dad had a massive stroke. He was sleeping in a Lay-Z-Boy to avoid acid reflux, and an atrial defib threw a clot into his brain. It wiped out about 75% of his left hemisphere (he’s right-handed). His wife didn’t find him until the next morning. They airlifted him from the tiny town where he lived to Pocatello. By then, the damage was already done: they’ve just been feeding him and monitoring the edema.
I wasn’t sure of his condition until today, when my brother sent a recording of a conversation he had with the neurologist (brother in Nashville, doc in Pocatello). His prognosis is not hopeful: he’ll never get his speech or mobility back. He’d have to spend the rest of his life in a rest home, intubated (breathing and food), and his diabetes, high blood pressure, and various complications from the stroke mean he wouldn’t last long. One way or the other, the stroke will do him in.
The doc says that my dad doesn’t respond to commands to wiggle fingers or stick out his tongue, so not only is the speech center gone, it looks like the language comprehension is also gone, and the doc doesn’t think there’s much of anyone in there at all.
First of all, I’m OK. We weren’t close (as some of you may have inferred), so I’m not living in a false-hope “OMG I hope we get him back” world. I’m also not determined to make him suffer (assuming there’s enough of him to register suffering). His poor wife (not my mom) is bearing the brunt of this, and this afternoon, the sibs and I will be teleconferencing to decide things like tracheostomies and feeding tubes and DNRs.
Do any of you know what kinds of things to look for or ask about? The neurologist was pretty frank about the extent of the damage (very extensive) and the grim prognosis and the tendency of family members to over-interpret signs of someone being in there. (Our faith doesn’t require that we extend life indefinitely under every and all circumstances, so that’s not a factor.)
Thanks in advance.
I’d say that I wish I could help you, dicentra, but the truth is that I’m rather grateful that I have no relevant experience to offer. From the lack of any response to basic commands, I have to say it looks pretty grim. My best wishes to you and yours; may you find strength and comfort.
Also, great vid! One of the better celebrity moments I’ve seen.
Just got off the phone with the sibs. My dad’s wife (not my mom) wants to take him home and care for him, but we know she’ll literally kill herself trying to shoulder it all herself, because she’s one of those hyper-diligent types.
Very sad. This is her third husband (she’d been twice-widowed), and she says it’s the first time she’s loved someone who loved her back. I’m doubtful that my dad is capable of actual love, but he can do affection and other simulacra, and if it seems like love to her, that’s close enough, I reckon. Doesn’t say much for her first two husbands.
She’s hopeful for a miracle, as in full recovery. I very much doubt she’ll get her wish.
We’re recommending that she sign the DNR and send him to a nursing home so that she doesn’t kill herself but she can spend time with him, maybe long enough to resign herself to the situation. If he makes it for two more weeks, we will reevaluate the situation.
He’s only 78; his parents lived into their 90s. WTF? His blood pressure spiked suddenly in 2002 (shortly after retirement), then he had congestive heart failure, then he got sleep apnea (which went untreated for years), then diabetes developed, and then diverticulitis, and then the acid reflux. Check all the boxes for risk of stroke, huh?
He had a huge belly, but for many years he’d been in really good shape: backpacking in the summer, riding his bike to work, doing yardwork and other puttering around when possible.
Let this be a lesson: treat the apnea; don’t get fat.
Joel was on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” several years ago and rather than belaboring the usual celebrity blather, he kept coming back to music, constantly running over to a piano to illustrate his points. It was refreshingly educational.
Sorry to hear it, di, and I wish I had some medical advice for you. It just sounds all kinds of bad, and if it were me and I had any consciousness left I’d be looking forward to meeting my maker. Keeping me around through mechanical means would completely piss me off.
Who wants to be Ariel Sharon?
Re. the vid: The most impressive bit is when Joel asks “what key do you play it in?”, the kid responds something along the lines of “any key you want”. (I can’t hear his response in the video, but he had to have said something like that, given the audience reaction.)
Joel then has him transpose the song down to C from the original key (guessing D or Eb). Transposing on a keyboard is somewhat tricky, compared to guitar/bass. That the kid is able to play all the fiddly-bits in the intro while moving them on-the-fly into a different key than he would have learned them, that’s quite impressive, I think.
My sympathies, dicentra. Regardless of the past, he’s still your dad and it’s always hard. Have you or the sibs talked to the Chaplain or your priest about speaking to your step-mom? She probably needs to be eased into the idea that he’s not going to get better.
di
Sorry to hear about your dad
How about hospice care? At least from what I’ve seen here, if just easing his passage to the next stage is the decision, it may be a better option … less medical and more personal.
Transposing on a keyboard is somewhat tricky, compared to guitar/bass.
The guy is obviously highly gifted if he can just transpose at will. Ten bux says he’s got perfect pitch.
Have you or the sibs talked to the Chaplain or your priest about speaking to your step-mom? She probably needs to be eased into the idea that he’s not going to get better.
I’m not sure how much their bishop has been involved, but it’s such a small town (pop. 200 including cows) that everybody knows what happened, and he’s probably popped by a few times. (The hospital is a couple hours from their town.)
The typical LDS approach in this kind of situation involves every individual engaging in prayer, fasting, and meditation to get a response from the horse’s mouth instead of going directly to clergy for spiritual guidance. The bishop can give her a blessing (a kind of special prayer) in which he can speak inspired words, but if God’s keeping his mouth shut, there’s not going to be much guidance for her. If you’ve got enough information to make a good decision on your own, God often makes you take the steps yourself instead of giving instructions.
Keeping me around through mechanical means would completely piss me off.
My sister observed that if he were in there, he’d be visibly enraged at not being able to speak or move, not glassy-eyed and half-smiling and holding people’s hands. He does react to people in his way but not much beyond lizard-brain reactions or slightly higher. She lay next to him the other night and he stroked her hair all night.
(That doesn’t sound like my dad when he was all there, but what do I know?)
Our faith teaches that all experience is valuable, including—and sometimes especially—bad experiences. Having to endure extended helplessness can be a spiritually edifying experience. My maternal grandfather suffered multiple small strokes at the end of his life, each slightly weakening him further, each forcing my tiny grandmother to haul his enormous, formerly athletic body around as well as she could. He endured the indignities with patience and I’m sure he and my grandmother grew from the experience.
However, he was still in possession of his marbles; my dad doesn’t appear to have more than a couple three left.
It’s entirely possible that events will do the deciding before anyone else has the chance do settle in to anything.
Poor woman. It’s too bad she has to face the death of a third husband. Nobody should have to do that.
Kid’s a natural. Plays by ear.
That’s the thing. Or perhaps they’re still in there somewhere, but trapped in a vessel that just doesn’t work.
I hope hubris isn’t getting the best of me here, but I suspect I’d learn everything I needed to know about living like that sooner rather than later.
Sorry to hear that, di.
I watched my grandmother die by tiny strokes over a two year period. My uncle and my mom didn’t speak for years after she passed since Grandma was strictly DNR in her views and my uncle disrespected her wishes. I thought my mom was going to beat his ass when she learned he’d okayed surgery (we lived several hundred miles away and he lived in her town.)
It must be hard to respect a DNR if you’re standing right there. Every cell in your body would be screaming “DO SOMETHING!” if for no other reason than you don’t want to passively “kill” that person through inaction.
If I were in a DNR state of mind and a relative went and R’d me anyway, I think I might forgive that, given that they’re in such a tough place.
A kindness of another sort, but some poking too:
Sorry, Di. That’s similar to what happened to my wife, only hers was more sudden…and more catastrophic . She only lived 8 days afterward, never came back to consciousness, no responses, even after the aneurysm was surgically ‘repaired’. The damage was too massive. And she was only 51.
Even had the best neurosurgeon in town. He did the best he could.
The damage was too massive…Even had the best neurosurgeon in town.
Stupid brain: Can’t handle a little asphyxia without falling completely to pieces and ruining everything forever.
That’s why I try to toughen mine up with some alcohol every day.