This might be long - brace yourself.
Nathan had a 4 day weekend due to the holiday last week so I went up there to spend some much-needed time with him...and the Kansas family, of course. I arrived in Wichita before noon just in time to meet Nathan for lunch. Within about 30 minutes, literally walking into the restaurant, Aleda (my MIL) calls to tell us that Jim (my FIL) was at a hospital having a heart attack. :0
That was last Thursday, July 3rd. Today is...someday, July 9, and he was released to go home earlier today. *sigh*
Let me just say that the past several days were another whirlwind of hospital.
Thursday, July 3rd - heart attack. Doc attempted stint, but it didn't work because the main left artery was 100% blocked. He tried several things, and nothing was going through to the heart. They sedated Jim for the remainder of the night and kept him in ICU. At one point a nurse asked Aleda if she knew how serious the situation was and highly recommended all of the children be there. :0
Friday...actually all the days kinda get mixed up. Basically, Jim had a medium but serious heart attack. The doctor said it wasn't massive, but that it was also definitely not mild. His PA was more frank with us and told us that Jim was 'lucky' to be alive and that someone was looking out for him. She said this is his second chance at life. He wasn't supposed to make it.
Amazing.
Craziness.
Broken clocks - Jim said that in the middle of one night, he asked his nurse what time it was. She told him it was 1 a.m. He went to sleep for a couple of hours (or so he thought) and asked her again what time it was. It was right after 1 a.m. He asked her several more times, and it was never past 1 a.m. He told her the clocks were broken.
Raspberries - One day while Jim still had a bunch of drugs in his system, he kept seeing raspberries every time he closed his eyes. He also saw the bathroom doorknob move from the middle of the door all the way to the bottom. He said he didn't know how he was going to reach down there to get it open. The the clock was moving all over the wall, and there were yellow squiggly lines on the wall. Drugs do what we call 'the raspberry effect.'
The dad is now home and doing better.
It's pretty crazy that this would happen now. I'm just glad I was up there already. If it had to happen, the timing sure was nice.
I'm learning. I'm trying to learn. Sometimes it's hard not to get disappointed. Initially, they were hoping to release Dad on Monday, but we had a bit of a 'scare' when he began having chest pains out of the blue again. Ugh. For real?
They took care of it, and the PA said the 'setback' was actually 'no big deal.'
What now? The artery is still 100% blocked. They've given him medicine to try to clear it somewhat and were going to try the stint thing again in several weeks. However, that part of the hart is already damaged, and there's no point in doing the stint thing if that part of the heart can't do anything anyway. The good thing - the docs said if there's a place to have a heart attack, that's the part of the heart where you want it. The doctor himself had this same kind of heart attack 15 years ago and is living with damaged tissue in that same area. He said, "Jim may not even miss it." But now he really has to take care of himself and the remainder of the heart. Another attack would be way too risky.
So I left Kansas today and made it to El Crapo, I mean El Campo around 9. Nice drive. I may just have some of the information wrong up there because I'm a bit on the sleepy side. I'll think of more tomorrow.
Thank you...whoever knew about our dad and was praying for him. We saw miracles, and I'll share about it more tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment