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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Today started at my mother's house, in Owego, NY. I did a little work today, but not all that much, really.

At 5:37 PM today, I was on my computer, playing WoW. I was in a Karazhan raid, for those in-the-know. My cell phone started ringing, upstairs on the dresser where I'd left it; Mom yelled for me, so I trotted upstairs and answered. It was a call from my eldest sister's cell phone.

On the line was her husband. "Get packing and hit the road," he said. "Your father's been taken to Corning Hospital, they think he may have had a heart attack. Don't drive to fast."

The military life taught me many things. One of them was the art of rapid departure. I was packed in five minutes, and on the road in five more. Owege is about a 65 minute drive to Corning if you follow the speed limit. But I have a fast car, which I rarely stretch to it's abilities; I figured to make it in 50 or less. It was a nice cloudy day, the road had dried off, traffic was light. In Georgia I'd once managed to peg my speedometer at 120; I didn't get going that fast this time, but I did put the spurs to it.

Thankfully for the speed limit, after a few minutes on the road I got another call, that Dad was being transferred to Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, PA. That was a stroke of luck for me, as Sayre is along the highway I was taking to go to Corning. The call came just in time, as the very next exit was for Sayre.

That's where I am now. I've been waiting a half hour, but the ambulance bringing him from Corning hasn't arrived yet. I'll update this post with new imformation when I learn anything.

Update 1: 7:10 PM. My stupid Sprint phone's not getting any service in here. I knew I should have picked up a T-Mobile phone while I was in Buffalo. I bet they get service here.

Update 2: 9:02 PM. The people at the front desk forgot to tell me when Dad arrived, so I didn't find out until I got bored and harassed them again. Then I went upstairs to find him in his room, getting an EKG. But enough about me, you want (a) the prognosis, and (b) the history.

(A): He had a heart attack, last night or early this morning. His heart is functioning normally right now, so he's going to spend the night here. Tomorrow at around nine or ten AM, he'll have a coronary angiography, where they insert a catheter into a femoral artery, thread it up to his aorta, and release some ink. They'll watch the ink on X-Ray to see where the blocked arteries are. If there's only one or two blockages, they'll probably insert a stent right there. If there's more blockages, they'll schedule bypass surgury later.

(B): Last night, Dad went to bed an hour early, at 11 PM. After six hours, his bladder informed him that he'd had enough sleep and it was time to release some hydraulic pressure. After he took care of business, he realized he was feeling "Quite poorly", and as it was getting worse, he called an ambulance.

In Corning Hospital, they took blood, and hooked him up into some diagnostic machines. The machines said he was fine, so they reassured him that it was a good idea to come in with any symptoms, and they scheduled him for a cardiac stress test that afternoon.

After some waiting around doing some reading and some work, the medical staff came bustling back into his room. His blood work had come back, and showed that he had indeed had a heart attack. (One particular enzyme that's supposed to be at "2" was at "6" on a logarithmic scale.) Still, the EKG showed that his heart was working normally at the moment, so they arranged to transfer him to Robert Packard, which had a better coronary unit. That was when he called my Sis and gave her a list of things he wanted from home; he'd run out of reading material, and needed references to do any more work.

Then I arrived at the hospital, getting to his room after he'd been here twenty minutes or so. Fifteen minutes later, my sister and brother-in-law arrived too; they'd left their daughter with her grandparents in Horseheads. (Apparently Grandpa gave her crackers and Grandma let her onto the waterbed, without consulting each other, so now there are crumbs all over the bed.)

So, that's the story. I'm going back to my mother's place tonight some time to sleep, and I'll come back in the morning to check the schedule. He's in a hospital bed with oxygen in his nose, a nitroglycerin patch on his back, a portable monitor on his chest, and a IV shunt in his arm. (No IV at the moment.)

Update 3: 9:43 PM. I didn't stop for dinner on my way over. Fortunatly, I had some cookies in the car; I was planning on taking them to the weekend game up at my friend Paul's place. I've been munching far more cookies than I should be. Dad didn't want any, although he doesn't have to start fasting for the surgery until midnight tonight. But then, a heart attack probably makes one a wee bit concious of the quality of their diet.

Also, his angigraphy is complicated by his allergy to shellfish. The dye they use is iodine, which is a component in many shellfish allergies. So before he gets the catheter, he's going to get shots with some very powerful antihystamines to knock out his allergic response ahead of time.

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I finished wiring that last outlet. That's all the wiring I had in mind for the attic, so now the new insulation can be laid in. Next task: replace window caulking, and put construction foam around basement windows.

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Saturday night, my father and I did a little shopping at the Arnot Mall, then we met my eldest sister, her husband, their heir, and her in-laws, and all went to Chilie's for dinner. The food took forever to appear, but was quite tasty when it did show up. The manager was suitably apologetic.

Then we went back to my Dad's place, minus the in-laws. Sis suggested that I come over to her house some time for game night, as her husband is not much of a board gamer. Hmmm… a little gaming is never a bad thing.

She also mentioned that she had been considering getting me Settlers of Catan for a birthday gift, ultimately deciding against it for fear that I already had a copy. It was a resonable fear, because I've loved that game for more than a decade. But I'm pretty sure I don't actually have my own copy. Enough of my friends had it, plus there was the club copy, so I didn't ever need to get my own set.

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