A lot of people have inquired about my dad and offering best wishes. Thanks to all. It really means alot. But I think I'm ready to tell the whole story. I think it's quite a story, but I'm a little biased since he's my old man and all....
One night, my mom and dad were sitting around watching the tube, a nightly ritual in their house. At the commercial break, my dad decided he needed to get up from the couch so he did, but noticed something on the floor while he was getting up. So (like most of us do) he did about 13 things all at once, getting up and bending down to pick some catalog up off the ground. He had just been working out (doing a little light walking on treadmill) so he was a little winded. So these attributes combined, collided and in the process of getting up and bending down, he basically passed out. He stumbled a bit and fell into a corner of their family room. My startled mom was on him in a second. She gets over to him and rolls him out flat (he's crumpled up in a ball) and he's not breathing. He's got no pulse. Sad to say, but he was dead.
Back story: my dad is 71 years old and in pretty good health, for what he's been through. History of heart disease, had a major MI in 1980. History of high blood pressure, taking the latest and the greatest meds like their going out of style. Lost most of one lung and a lot of another when he threw a couple of clots into his lungs. 20 something years ago was chain smoker. Nearly blind at night from glaucoma. Lived hard, played hard. So, yeah, he's doing good. But he's got a lot of miles and they were beginning to show to all of us. My mom is a career nurse (head of Nursing at the end but years in the ER) and seeing somebody "dead" she did her best Hawkeye Pierce impression and screamed out "Not today, not on my watch!", thumped him hard in the chest (like Ali she says) and started CPR and Mouth to Mouth. She brought him back. He was blue and cold and she got a shallow pulse and sporatic breathing. Not the first time she's done that, but the first time it was somebody she knew (her husband of 45 years!). He stablized enough for a scream fest to 911 and the EMT's were there in no time. Very cool. By the time they were done, my dad was alert and responsive (enough to be making jokes about what a klutz he is and wondering why he felt like Joe Frasier..). So off to the hospital for a little look under the hood.
My dad's regular cardio guy was out of town, so an attending took a look at him and ran some tests. He was in ICU for the night and in the morning she (the internist) presented two options: a stress test to get some measurements, or a heart cath (dye in the blood and take some pictures). Her feelings were that the stress test was going to lead to the conclusion that they should do a cath, so she cut to the chase and ordered the cath. A couple of hours later, he's smiling for the camera and they're taking some lovely 8X10 glossies of his old pumper. And surprise, surprise, they found one of his cardiac arteries 98% blocked. Zoinks. So they strap him to a table and push in a stint(sp?) which will open that bad boy up like nobody's business. After that, he looks great. We saw him right after and you could immediately see a difference. He had color, his hands weren't cold. It was all good. They had him stay the night in step down and he was scheduled for departure in the morning. But not so fast Charlie.
The next morning, right before the shift change, the nurse came in to see if my dad needed help showering before he went home. "Nope, doing good" was his response. She escourted him into the shower and headed off with the other nurse of the unit to the shift change meeting. Normally during shift change all 4 nurses (2 coming on, 2 coming off) are in a meeting room to transfer knowledge. Standard practice. Everybody in the unit is wired up on monitors so no problem, it's only a couple of minutes. But people who are going home & in the shower aren't on monitors. They're in the shower. On the other side of the unit from the meeting room, where you can't hear a thing. But for some reason (I know the reason actually) there was a technician tweaking some gizmo at the central station that morning. He hears a thud and decides to check it out. Sounded like it came from the shower room. And there's my dad, not breathing, not pulse, blue and cold. Dead again. Dude starts screaming and hitting the red alert buttons and the nurses come out and begin the revival process. One of them assesses the situation and makes two phone calls: one to my mom, one to the priest to administer last rights. And of course she told my mom who she was calling second. Needless to say, we hauled ass to the hospital. We went from sighs of relief to certainty that this Christmas was really going to suck. But, by the time we got there, there he is, sitting up in the bed, looking a little haggard, but alive and kicking. He had another bruise on his chest from the nurse's smack of life and his groin wound had ripped open and was little bloody. (They go in for stints through the groin area). He had "passed out" again in the shower, while bending down to dry his legs.
So clearly that wasn't it. So we waited. We lived at the hospital all weekend and then into Monday. The wanted to run some tests on him, but the technicians who do it didn't work until Monday. So we waited. I read. I coded. My brother & I worked on basketball coaching ideas (he coaches his son up in Minnesota). And we prayed.
To make a long story short, here's what it was. My father was on massive meds for his blood pressure. Probably to the point that he didn't have enough(BP that is). In both episodes, he passed out, but into confined spaces. The body likes to stretch out when it faints so the heart can distribute blood to all areas quickly, but not when you're crumpled up in a ball in a shower or in a corner. After you faint, your system goes on auto pilot. If the auto pilot doesn't sense "life" kicking in, it activates the "core meltdown" circuit and shuts down. It's literally that simple. His body figured that it couldn't revive itself so it was dead. His pulse power was so limited by the drugs that he couldn't bring himself back to life. Only the miracle that God provided in my mom & this technician saved him. The current belief is that the artery blockage had nothing or little to do with things. If the ER crew or someone had correlated the meds in this fashion, they would've concluded that his meds needed to be adjusted, sent him home with a time bomb in his chest. If his doctor had decided to do a stress test instead of the cath, his heart was so blocked that he might've had an MI right then. Even though he was in the hospital, the results could've been fatal. And in the shower, if God wasn't watching out then, he'd been history too.
It's a long story to get to this point. Thanks for reading. I give God all the glory for my Dad's life. Us humans were just His pawns. And thanks to Him, my Dad is sitting at home, feeling better than he has in years, ready for Christmas with his grand kids and an exciting NFL post season.
One night, my mom and dad were sitting around watching the tube, a nightly ritual in their house. At the commercial break, my dad decided he needed to get up from the couch so he did, but noticed something on the floor while he was getting up. So (like most of us do) he did about 13 things all at once, getting up and bending down to pick some catalog up off the ground. He had just been working out (doing a little light walking on treadmill) so he was a little winded. So these attributes combined, collided and in the process of getting up and bending down, he basically passed out. He stumbled a bit and fell into a corner of their family room. My startled mom was on him in a second. She gets over to him and rolls him out flat (he's crumpled up in a ball) and he's not breathing. He's got no pulse. Sad to say, but he was dead.
Back story: my dad is 71 years old and in pretty good health, for what he's been through. History of heart disease, had a major MI in 1980. History of high blood pressure, taking the latest and the greatest meds like their going out of style. Lost most of one lung and a lot of another when he threw a couple of clots into his lungs. 20 something years ago was chain smoker. Nearly blind at night from glaucoma. Lived hard, played hard. So, yeah, he's doing good. But he's got a lot of miles and they were beginning to show to all of us. My mom is a career nurse (head of Nursing at the end but years in the ER) and seeing somebody "dead" she did her best Hawkeye Pierce impression and screamed out "Not today, not on my watch!", thumped him hard in the chest (like Ali she says) and started CPR and Mouth to Mouth. She brought him back. He was blue and cold and she got a shallow pulse and sporatic breathing. Not the first time she's done that, but the first time it was somebody she knew (her husband of 45 years!). He stablized enough for a scream fest to 911 and the EMT's were there in no time. Very cool. By the time they were done, my dad was alert and responsive (enough to be making jokes about what a klutz he is and wondering why he felt like Joe Frasier..). So off to the hospital for a little look under the hood.
My dad's regular cardio guy was out of town, so an attending took a look at him and ran some tests. He was in ICU for the night and in the morning she (the internist) presented two options: a stress test to get some measurements, or a heart cath (dye in the blood and take some pictures). Her feelings were that the stress test was going to lead to the conclusion that they should do a cath, so she cut to the chase and ordered the cath. A couple of hours later, he's smiling for the camera and they're taking some lovely 8X10 glossies of his old pumper. And surprise, surprise, they found one of his cardiac arteries 98% blocked. Zoinks. So they strap him to a table and push in a stint(sp?) which will open that bad boy up like nobody's business. After that, he looks great. We saw him right after and you could immediately see a difference. He had color, his hands weren't cold. It was all good. They had him stay the night in step down and he was scheduled for departure in the morning. But not so fast Charlie.
The next morning, right before the shift change, the nurse came in to see if my dad needed help showering before he went home. "Nope, doing good" was his response. She escourted him into the shower and headed off with the other nurse of the unit to the shift change meeting. Normally during shift change all 4 nurses (2 coming on, 2 coming off) are in a meeting room to transfer knowledge. Standard practice. Everybody in the unit is wired up on monitors so no problem, it's only a couple of minutes. But people who are going home & in the shower aren't on monitors. They're in the shower. On the other side of the unit from the meeting room, where you can't hear a thing. But for some reason (I know the reason actually) there was a technician tweaking some gizmo at the central station that morning. He hears a thud and decides to check it out. Sounded like it came from the shower room. And there's my dad, not breathing, not pulse, blue and cold. Dead again. Dude starts screaming and hitting the red alert buttons and the nurses come out and begin the revival process. One of them assesses the situation and makes two phone calls: one to my mom, one to the priest to administer last rights. And of course she told my mom who she was calling second. Needless to say, we hauled ass to the hospital. We went from sighs of relief to certainty that this Christmas was really going to suck. But, by the time we got there, there he is, sitting up in the bed, looking a little haggard, but alive and kicking. He had another bruise on his chest from the nurse's smack of life and his groin wound had ripped open and was little bloody. (They go in for stints through the groin area). He had "passed out" again in the shower, while bending down to dry his legs.
So clearly that wasn't it. So we waited. We lived at the hospital all weekend and then into Monday. The wanted to run some tests on him, but the technicians who do it didn't work until Monday. So we waited. I read. I coded. My brother & I worked on basketball coaching ideas (he coaches his son up in Minnesota). And we prayed.
To make a long story short, here's what it was. My father was on massive meds for his blood pressure. Probably to the point that he didn't have enough(BP that is). In both episodes, he passed out, but into confined spaces. The body likes to stretch out when it faints so the heart can distribute blood to all areas quickly, but not when you're crumpled up in a ball in a shower or in a corner. After you faint, your system goes on auto pilot. If the auto pilot doesn't sense "life" kicking in, it activates the "core meltdown" circuit and shuts down. It's literally that simple. His body figured that it couldn't revive itself so it was dead. His pulse power was so limited by the drugs that he couldn't bring himself back to life. Only the miracle that God provided in my mom & this technician saved him. The current belief is that the artery blockage had nothing or little to do with things. If the ER crew or someone had correlated the meds in this fashion, they would've concluded that his meds needed to be adjusted, sent him home with a time bomb in his chest. If his doctor had decided to do a stress test instead of the cath, his heart was so blocked that he might've had an MI right then. Even though he was in the hospital, the results could've been fatal. And in the shower, if God wasn't watching out then, he'd been history too.
It's a long story to get to this point. Thanks for reading. I give God all the glory for my Dad's life. Us humans were just His pawns. And thanks to Him, my Dad is sitting at home, feeling better than he has in years, ready for Christmas with his grand kids and an exciting NFL post season.