Almost forgot, during his conversation with Grandma, Dad learned that cousin Topher's grandmother had just died. She was 100 years old, which means it couldn't have been a shock, but is still tragic. I don't recall meeting her (although I suspect I did at Debbie and Topher's wedding), someone in that family could not be other than charming.

My deepest sympathy at their loss.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I went to visit Dad at around noon. I found him eating lunch sitting up; he'd moved (with help) to a chair for breakfast, and stayed there until after lunch. Eating solid food is a good thing, but he needed blood again today, so he's staying in the ICU overnight again. Perhaps tomorrow he can move to a normal room.

While there, I received a strict order from my older sister that I was to get Dad to call his parents. I think both he and his mom were happy to be talking.

I stayed for perhaps an hour and a half, then Dad chased me off so he could get a nap before the next batch of visitors arrived. When I got to the parking lot, I discovered that I had left my keys in the ignition and locked the car. Whoops. While I was waiting for Mom to arrive and rescue me, the Meekers showed up, followed by my sister and brother-in-law. When I finally got into my car, it was off to do a little necessary shopping and some laundry. I'm still living out of a suitcase, which is annoying. Still, beats having my chest hacked open.

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I apologize for the delay in progress updates. I dropped my laptop while in the ICU waiting room. Whoops. Luckily, all that it needs is a new hard drive. I might even be able to recover some of my photos, the last two months of which have not been backed up.

My father is recovering. It'd be a stretch to say he's doing well, but for a guy who had his chest chopped open and his heart stopped for a couple of hours, he's downright peachy.

The surgery itself was not without complications. Just as they were starting, his heart stopped. Rather than try to restart it, they just rushed through opening the chest and hooking him into the heart-lung machine, which had been part of the original plan. The head surgeon told me "If you're going to have your heart stop, the best place in the world would be on the table in a cardiac OR with a team assembled. Still, if he'd waited ten more minutes, it would have saved me a lot of sweat."

When we got to see him, he had been extubated, although he's got a mask on and lots of plumbing hooked into his neck and arm. He was loopy from the drugs, making him rather more argumentative than normal. He was also having some issues with bleeding, so he got blood, plasma, and platelets crammed into his veins. He tired quickly, so we went to a late lunch/early dinner at a Sayre restraunt.

We went back again later in the afternoon, and he was looking better; much less pale, better vital signs, more coherent in conversation. He had a list of things for his childen to do (pay bills, teach a class for 6th-graders, see about an absentee ballot…), and talked on the phone for a little bit. He was also concerned with how his parents were taking this, to his credit.

So, he's doing all right for now. I'll be back at the hospital tomorrow, perhaps after dropping my laptop off for repairs in Corning. So email and web updates may not be quite as frequent.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:52 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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My Dad's bypass surgery was finished about forty-five minutes ago. I've not yet spoken to the surgeon, but the receptionist says that the doc says all went well. Dad's still unconcious and they're doing follow-up stuff like chest x-rays and whatnot. We should get to see him at around 3 PM.

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Dad will be taken down for surgery between six and seven AM. Surgery is scheduled to start at eight AM. It should last between three and eight hours.

So on Dad's advice, we're not planning on showing up to see him off crazy early, instead we'll show up at noon, which is the earliest he'd be coming out of the recovery room. We'll probably be waiting awhile.

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We talked to the surgeon. Dad has three blockages, one each of the right coronary artery, the left circumflex artery, and the posterior descending artery. Unfortunately, those are the three most important arteries supplying blood to the heart. All three have an occlusion of greater than 95%, which is to say almost no blood is getting though.

He's been going strong this far because the nearby marginal arteries are contributing blood back into the primary arteries. That doesn't work all that well, which is why he had his trouble. For the record, there doesn't seem to be any damage to the heart muscle itself, so it doesn't count as a "heart attack", just a transient issue.

So the plan now is a triple bypass. That'll happen tomorrow. Following surgery, there'll be a four to seven day hospital stay. When he leaves, he'll be fully functional, i.e. able to move around and do the tasks necessary for normal living. He can't lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk or do anything athletic for a two to four week home recovery period. (Despite the name, he can go back to work if he feels up to it.) Lastly, he will not be allowed to drive for eight weeks.

So, I am hereby assigning myself as home health aide, chauffeur, and dogsbody.

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Dad just got wheeled back into the room, having finished the angiography. They didn't put in any stents, and he was told that he's probably going to need bypass surgery. But we'll have to wait for a surgeon to show up and tell us more. At the moment, he's under orders to keep his right leg still, as there's a hole in his femoral artery that needs to heal.

T_ is clearly distressed at Bapa being in a hospital bed, looking unwell. Frequent parental reassurance is being applied.

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A team just came to wheel Dad's bed off to the cath lab for his surgery. He'll be in a waiting area until the team is ready for him, but it's patients and staff only, guests have to stay up in his room. So we'll have more news in a couple of hours.

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Dad's been given an ultrasonic inspection of his ticker, I suspect the images will be used to plan the route of the catheter. We also had a visit from a gaggle of doctors in training. The students looked so young to me, heaven knows Dad must think they were babies.

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This morning we're waiting around, until my father's turn comes up for the catheterization lab. So the family is loafing around the hospital room, making desultory conversation.

Today Dad's granddaughter came along with her parents, and she presented "Bapa" a get-well card. By "presented" I mean she tried to toss it across the room to him, then hid back behind Mommy again. I think the hospital was a little intimidating to her.

At any rate, my sister and child have disappear somewhere, as T_ is a little small and gets bored rapidly in a small room. I expect that they're in the waiting room playing with the children's toys there.

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