May seemed to fly by pretty quickly, up until the end of it. I got a call on the morning of Friday, May 20th from my sister. My dad was in an ambulance being taken to the VA Hospital. He had a heart attack while at work and the school nurse (he is a security guard at a school) called an ambulance for him. I didn't find out until later that he has been having these for 2 months and the school nurse said "enough is enough" and called 911.
Through out the day, I was receiving calls either from my brother or sister in law with all of the news that was coming in from the VA ER. Several heart attacks in the past 2 months. Dead heart tissue. Messed up electrical system. All three arteries blocked. Triple bypass. Extra blood vessel growth?. Heart lesions. Withdrawals from Substance abuse.
I went to bed at 9PM that night. It didn't work though. I got out of bed (where I was snuggling with my two children because Clayton was out for the night) at 11:30PM and hung out on the couch for awhile. I put Faye in her bed and went back to mine at 1:30AM. I last looked at the clock at 2AM, but it still took me a while to fall asleep. I sprang awake at 5AM, noticing that my husband was STILL not in bed and got up. He was laying on the couch. I read on my phone in bed for 2.5 hours and UP for the day at 7:30AM. Less than 3 hours of sleep. That REALLY sucked.
Saturday morning I went with my brothers to see my dad. I was really nervous about how he was. I was scared that he was going to look and act as sick as I thought he was. I was worried that because he had not had anything to drink in 36 hours and he had not had a cigarette in 24 hours that he was going to be in a really bad mood. Of course I am the type of person that goes over the possible scenario's in my head before hand, they were not pretty. I guess I felt I prepared myself and if my dad had been in the mood I expected him to be in, it would have helped, but who knows! The car ride there (though already a long one) seemed like one of the longest car rides I had ever been on. I just thought and thought the entire way there. I teared up a little from worry and then I felt fine and then I teared up again. When we got there I was able to keep calm and I wanted to base my emotions and reactions according to how my dad was feeling, so I tried not to be happy or sad. It was SUCH a relief once we walked in the room. My dad's face lit up and I got a cheerful "Ker Bear!" There's my dad, laying in a hospital bed, hooked up to blood pressure cuffs and other stuff, barely able to move because of chest pain and he actually looked better than usual. Without the "substances" in his body, he looked less swollen and had good color to his face (which is normally bright red). Of course he was not doing better, technically. He was having heart attacks. Blocked arteries and a clot in his thigh. He needed surgery or he would die. But he was in a very surprisingly good mood.
Saturday night we went over to Clayton's cousins house for his Uncle's 60th Birthday Party. I managed to get a pretty good picture on my phone of a tornado that was about 8 miles north west of us. Seemed so much closer at the time. We got to the party, parked around the block because it was a surprise party and had to walk to the house. Of course as soon as we got out of the car, the sirens start to go off. I walk in to the house and Clayton's cousin asks me a few times if I was OK. She said I looked as white as a ghost, haha!
We had a decent time there and the kids had a lot of fun and then I got a call from my mother at 8:22pm. Yep, I remember the exact time. My father had another heart attack at the hospital while he was on the phone with my brother and collapsed. My brother yelled at him to press the call nurse button and then he hung up and called the nurses station. My dad called him back not long after that and was doing better. They gave him a shot of nitroglycerin to open up his arteries. Since he had not had an alcohol in 48 hours, at that time, the heart attack had been a lot worse than the previous ones. Seems all the alcohol he normally drinks was keeping his blood pretty thin and causing his heart attacks to be less severe.
Again, I was up most the night. I was in bed around 10PM, or 11:30PM or something. All I remember is that I was in bed laying there awake for a couple hours. I got up, kicked Clayton off of the couch (where he had, again, fallen asleep) and laid there for a few hours. I watch a documentary about the Great Barrier Reef and then a documentary about Sharks. I fell asleep for a short time during the Shark one and turned off the TV and closed my eyes, but with the TV off, I couldn't fall asleep. I wonder if the Shark one was boring? I'll have to re-watch it sometime... I last looked at the clock at 2:30AM this time. Because my husband was not out at all hours of the night at a certain party with certain people, I did not spring out of bed at the crack of dawn. I managed to sleep until 7AM! We skipped church. I may have gotten at least one hour more than the night before, but less than 7 hours in two days is still not enough to function, for me.
Originally, my dad was supposed to have surgery that Monday, but his red blood cell count was incredibly high. They drained blood out of him and got his blood pressure way down. When he first came into the hospital, it was 190 over something. That first evening it was up to 205 over 100 and something. I cannot remember the numbers, but it was HIGH. They drained blood out of him at least twice, I believe. It wasn't until Monday afternoon that I got the news that he was scheduled for surgery on Wednesday at 7:30 AM. They ran tests on his liver and kidneys and got the test results back for them on Monday as well. All clean. Healthy liver and kidneys. I asked my brother if he made sure they didn't mix up the test results with somebody elses. Seems impossible that those would come back with no problems.
I woke up on Wednesday morning at 5:30AM and we left the house at 6:20AM. My mother in law took the day off of work for me and watched my kids all day. Clayton and I got coffee and were on the road just before 6:30AM. I was really nervous that we were going to get there too late and I wouldn't be able to see my dad before they took him out of his room to prep for surgery. It's a 30 minute drive in the first place and I was worried we were approaching rush hour. We still got there just before 7AM. We beat my brother! They were running late with everything anyways and they didn't end up getting my dad out of the room and down to the next floor until closer to 8:10AM. I was fine, but I felt a little sad when we were standing, with my dad in the bed on wheels, waiting for the rest of the surgical team to get there. My dad was clearly upset. He was pretty worried about the surgery and his face was a rosy red again, for the first time in almost 5 days.
The team got there and Dad and his team dropped us off at the Surgical waiting room. The room was a large indoor courtyard. Incredibly bright and just huge. My mother took the day off to come sit with us and her and my sister in law got to the hospital around 9AM and Clayton left shortly after that. We sat for a few hours. We got one update that they had started late and had not yet gotten to the open heart part of the surgery. They were "still harvesting the veins". We decided that we were not going to eat the cafeteria food and I suggested we take the light rail downtown or to the Mall of America to eat. We took it down to the Mall and had Rainforest Cafe. None of the three had ever been on the light rail before. We got back and I called the "operation update line" to see how Dad was doing. It was about 2-2:30PM at this time and they had started with his heart and were nearly half way through. They were done about 4PM. My brother kept bugging my sister in law to go call on the line for an update and she kept saying "let's just wait 5 minutes", he bugged her enough so that she went over there and before she was able to come back with the news that "Dr. John is on his way out", Dr. John was already out.
So, we're all sitting there waiting and Sarah (my sister in law) is away calling the line and a doctor comes walking out, straight towards us, and he's carrying a silver lock box under his arm. He comes up, asks if we are the family and then sits down, putting this box in his lap. I, honest to God, thought he was going to take this box, open in up and hand it to us explaining that the surgery did not go well and this is your dad's heart. Clearly I watch too much television.
Dad's surgery went well. He was scheduled for a triple bypass and they ended up performing a quadruple. I do not know when they decided this and how long they knew before surgery, but they never told us until afterwards. We were able to go into the SICU (Surgical Intensive Care Unit) at 5:15PM to see him. He was still out. They were not even going to attempt to wake him until around 7-7:30PM. He looked pretty creepy. I was fine, unless I looked at his face and especially his mouth. His eyes just looked like he was sleeping, but his mouth made him look like he was dead. The only breathing he was doing was by a breathing machine. He had tubes all over the place and all sorts of machines hooked up to him. The nurse said that a lot of times, alcoholics do not handle anesthesia very well and wake up extremely agitated. He woke up fine though and had no problems. After we saw him, we left and I hopped back onto the light rail to go downtown to meet Clayton, who was at work.
Thursday I got Maddox out of school 10 minutes early and we walked half a mile up the street and caught the bus downtown. I had my mother drive downtown and get the kids and I took the light rail back to the VA Hospital to see my dad. He was out of the SICU and into another area. I'm not sure what the floor was, post surgical recovery? I walked in to his room and he was in the middle of talking to a Neurologist. It seems earlier, in the morning, his left leg (which is NOT the leg that he had the veins taken from) had gone completely numb from just above his ankle down. It came back and then went numb again 20 minutes later. They were thinking he might of had a mini stroke. The Neurologist and two UofM kids (residents?) were in there with my dad having him do all sorts of funny tests. I think the Neurologist was kind of a douche. He was throwing out all sorts of medical terms. Neither of us really knew what he was talking about. You'd think in a place like the VA, where a very good majority of the people there are 60+, that they'd use more "commoner" words instead of all their medical jargon. From what I gathered, it sounded like they thought he might of had a mini stroke and they were going to do a CT Scan. It sounded like the guy said an MRI would be better, but they were going to do a CT Scan. I don't know why they couldn't/didn't do a MRI. he had a CT Scan and it came back fine and he hasn't had any issues with it since.
After that, the nurse came and had my dad stand up and he pushed his wheel chair around to take a walk for the first time since he was wheeled out of his room for surgery. We did a lap around one side of the area and that left leg was really stiff and heavy. I sat with him while he ate his dinner. Opened some of the beverages, tried his creamed corn soup (per his request LOL), and read a card that the employee's from school sent. His glasses were in my brothers car. The most I've helped my dad since I was in elementary school and I might have gotten him something from the fridge while he was watching TV in the living room. He was really tired and kept dozing off. He did not sleep well the night before. I was only supposed to stay a half hour and leave by 5:30 to get back downtown by 6, in time for Clayton to get off work, but I didn't end up leaving until 6:30, after Clayton called to see if I was downtown yet! They kept trying to get my dad to get in bed and rest, but he refused to go to bed until after my brother got to the hospital. He said if he fell asleep before Eric (my brother) got there, he wasn't getting up again until the morning. He had a feeling he was going to be OUT and he needed to be!
Clayton and the kids and I stopped in for a visit with my dad a day later. We baby sat Logan (Eric & Sarah's 2 year old son/My nephew) and then after my brother came to pick him up, we met my brother and Logan up at the hospital. We were probably only there for 10 minutes. Before we even got 10 minutes from our house, Faye was talking about how she wanted to touch things at the hospital. Both kids were terribly impatient. I don't blame them. We never see "Grandpa Dave" and they are not used to him at all. Faye wanted to see "Your dad at the hospital" and so we did. My dad liked to see them and understands too that they are not as comfortable with him because we only see him maybe 1-2 times a year. Hopefully that will change now.
This past Thursday afternoon, my dad got to leave the hospital. My brother picked him up and brought him home. My brother has my dad's car at my brother's house and my dad is not supposed to drive for a month. Of course his first day home, we walked a couple blocks down to the corner store. I was feeling a bit upset and panicked on Thursday. I just do not understand why they let him go home. He lives all alone. I'm so nervous that he is going to start smoking and drinking again and according to my sister, it sounds like both my brother and dad have this theory that "drinking and smoking in moderation is OK", that is apparently what my dad's doctor told him. But no intelligent doctor would ever tell an alcoholic that drinking in moderation is OK. Alcoholics do not drink in moderation. And if they do, their idea of "moderation" is just a matter of opinion!
I was worried, so after we finished most of our errands on Saturday, I called my dad to see if we could come over for a short visit. He didn't answer, so I left him a message. I called my brother to see if he had talked to my dad and he hadn't recently, but he said that he was going to go over there to bring him to the grocery store. We decided just to go home after that. Faye passed out in the car too and I figured as long as my brother is going over there, at least SOMEONE is going over there. My dad called not long later and I talked to him for a little bit. I told him that we were not going to stop by because Faye had fallen asleep in the car and that we knew he would be going to the store soon. About a week before my dad ended up in the hospital, I had called and asked him if would go to a Twins game with Clayton and I, this coming Father's Day. He said yes and I was completely surprised and giddy about that! Then he ended up in the hospital with heart attacks, needing open heart surgery and I figured that was down the tubes. While I was on the phone with him on Saturday, though, he brought up the game and said we would have to take it easy. "I just want you to know I'm not going to be able to walk that fast, especially if we have to be walking up and down stairs." Yay! He's coming! Fortunately, we do not really have to do much walking up and downstairs. We had awesome seats, so just a couple short stairs! He sounded so good on the phone. So happy and healthy and energized, nothing like he used to sound like over the phone.
And we never did figure out what was in that doctors box!
