Yesterday was a crazy day. My father is in the hospital...an acute care/extended stay hospital, actually. Perhaps a little background on this is in order...
Sunday, January 28, 2011, I was doing laundry and didn't hear the phone ring, but my husband called to me to come up and listen to the message on the answering machine. It was very scary...my dad's voice, barely audible and audibly shaking calling "help me! help me!" I called back immediately and when my dad answered he told me that he had called my brother Doyle (who was about 25 miles away without any transportation because Brenda had dropped him off at his farm and was coming back to get him after she finished with some errands.) Doyle might have been out of pocket, but he had his thinking cap on and immediately called 911 and informed them that the call would need to be transferred to the closest amblance to my dad because Daddy needed help. On my phone, my dad, voice still shaking, told me that he wanted me to stay on the line because he was going to try to go unlock the front door like Doyle had told him to do for the emergency ambulance drivers to be able to get to him. And sure enough, before the telephone went dead I heard my dad talking to the 911 drivers. I called my brother back and he told me what had happened. He said the Emergency crew was going to call him and let him know Dad's condition and where they would take him, and sure enough a minute later the ambulance driver called back with that information. Doyle and Sheryl (our cousin who works with Daddy four days a week) and their spouses were going from two different directions to Grapvine to meet Dad at the hospital.
My dad was given immediate care and the attending doctor called in his doctors to consult and the results of a lot of the tests that they had given dad started coming in. Dad was asleep...the ambulance drivers had given him an injection to calm him...but the test results to see if he'd had a heart attack or stroke were negative. More tests, days going by in the hospital, my dad beginning to feel better and the final accurate diagnosis...the most immediate being that his temperature was very high and needed to be brought down to. My dad has congestive heart failure and needed quick treatment to prevent any damage to his heart. The 2nd thing going on, the root cause of his feeling sick ... he had an infection in his blood stream...sepsis and the doctors needed to find an antibiotic that would target the infection, be strong enough to clear up all the infection, while being something that Dad would be able to tolerate without it damaging his health or his heart.
Because the antibiotic the doctors decided on needed to be administered intravenously and because he needed antibiotic treatments every day for about 40 days, along about the 7th or 8th of February (after the snow in Dallas melted) he moved to an acute care/long term care hospital. He needed no nursing home care. Once a day he needed an iv of his medication to be administered. Daddy seems to like the place a lot. Although Carlyle in Southlake is not highly rated for good patient care, Dad only needs help with his pick line IV administration. He is perfectly capable of taking care of himself and is one of the few patients there who walks by himself and does not need help to bathe or dress. At Carlyle he meets people. He talks to me about who else is there and is not alone. He seems to enjoy the food...calls the cook a chef. He seems to get better and better every day and is already making plans to check out of there on the 3rd of the March so he can attend an annual pipeliner reunion the following weekend..
Which brings me to yesterday. Dad's five kids are all calling him and checking on him and talking among ourselves about his condition, but Doyle lives the closest, so when things happen, sometimes Doyle is there to take care of it and handle any problems. He keeps the other 5 of us informed...in fact he also keeps a few of the grandkids, who are all close to dad, informed of Dads condition. However, last week he and Brenda had plans to travel together to Hawaii to attend a business convention...and since Dad is taken care of where he is and Dad has Sheryl (Cochran, our cousin who has been working with him four days a week to keep his house and balance his spending and sort and read his mail and run his errands for many months now) to go visit him regularly and take care of things at his house and to bring things to him at the hospital, it looked like Doyle would not need to worry while he was gone.
Until yesterday when dad called to say that he isn't sure he got a full dose of his antibiotic because much of it had leaked out onto his bed and bedclothes. It was all settled by reporting the incident to the Doctor who said he wanted the results of a blood test to see if Dad needed more of his medicine....but it seemed to take the whole day. Of course it took place while Doyle was out of town and could not go talk to them! And of course the workers at the hospital denied any problem or wrongdoing and had to be told that Dad is not a nursing home patient but rather an acute care patient and that he has no kind of mental problem and does not report things that are not so. In the end, after talking to Dad and Sheryl and me, the nurse who was responsible for the 'leaking' IV line made sure to call Dad and Me and Sheryl all three, sort of acknowledging that Dad has family who cares about his treatment and needs to know. I called him last night before he went to bed and he said he was glad that it was not going to affect his treatment and that he was glad he would not need to stay in the hospital another day past his release date. He told me that he is looking forward to attending a Retired Pipeliner Reunion the weekend after he gets out of the hospital. I hope he is able to make it to San Antonio because he said his old friend Red Tinkler has agreed to meet him there.
I sent Doyle a quick email to tell him what the nurse had said to me about the 'numbers on Dad's tests. And I, for one, am glad that Doyle is very likely back there today. (Yesterday Doyle and Brenda were stuck at the airport in Los Angeles waiting for a flight home, so he might not be home yet) I had a terrible time making calls and having to leave messages and not getting return calls...and Doyle can go to the nurse's desk and look at the records there to see what happened. I'm glad Dad mostly takes care of himself. I'm so glad Sheryl is there to pay attention to what he wants and get it for him and I am glad when Doyle is in Denton and can go by to see Dad and see with his own eyes how he is doing. At the end of the day I still had a little bit of my Sunday left to stop and appreciate the peace and quiet that surrounds me. I know I am blessed, and I suspect that we all are. I have heard that there is not a God, but it is too hard for me to believe that there is not some higher power who has been taking care of me and of the things I would stumble through and fail at if there was no God.
Because I was clearing up loose ends from yesterday and doing things I had skipped while I was on the phone or waiting for the phone to ring, today for lunch I fixed Mike and Me and Mike2 BLT's for lunch. I had nearly forgotten how easy they are to throw together and how good they taste. Comfort food. I was not able to get my sandwich off my mind when I sat down to write this, and that's why the title of it is BLT's
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