My dad

Thursday, April 30, my dad went to the doctor just to get checked out since he had a fast heartrate, and he's always had a murmur. He went to one doctor and found out it had gotten worse, then the next doctor wanted him to have a cathederization. Of course, my dad, being my workaholic dad, wanted to work Friday and Saturday, THEN go in on Monday. My brother, Nabeel called and was freaking out trying to convince him not to wait, then he called my uncle, who came over and even after my mom and I had spent an hour trying to convince him to go in that night, my uncle came in and two minutes later, my dad was ready to go to the hospital. I asked my uncle what he said to make him go and he said, "I just asked him, "what would you do if it was me?" and he knew he'd make me go!". So we all went to Arlington Memorial, where he stayed overnight. Then they did some tests Friday morning and they found out he has 3 arteries that are about 80% blocked and his mytrial valve, which is the murmur that he's always had, has gotten significanlty worse. Therefore, he needed a triple bypass and a valve replacement. Interestingly enough, despite the recent swine flu hype, they are using a pig valve as a replacement.



Nabeel talked to all his medical collegues and they recommended another doctor, who works at Presbeterian in Dallas, which is the same hospital where my brother works. So my dad was transferred to Presby that night and stayed the night. He actually has a fabulous room. It was actually more like a hotel room...it was the room, then a suite/sitting room with a couch, some tables, etc. He has a little fridge, microwave...welcome to the hotel! Actually, speaking of which, Joey took his kids for a walk around the hospital and they wanted to go to the top floor. Well,they went to the 10th floor and Iguess it was restricted access, so they went to the next best thing, the 9th floor. What do you suppose is on the 9th floor? a hotel. I kid you not. there is actually a floor that is a hotel, i guess for family to stay in. Weird. I've never seen something like that before, but I guess it's a good idea!

Sunday night, I didn't want to go home bc it would take forever to get to the hospital in the morning. The surgery was scheduled for 7:30 am, which means they'd take him back to prep him by 6:30 or so. We needed to be there by 6am to see him, which means I'd have to get up at 4am to drive here from home. So instead, my sister in law, Heather, took the baby home with her (bc she has to sleep in bed with me, and gordon moves around too much...he was afraid to have her in bed, but Heather said she'd be fine with it). I went to sleep at my cousin's new apartment, since I hadn't seen it yet. Well, we ended up hanging out and talking until about 3:15am and had to get up at 5am to get to the hospital. Um, so much for my plan of getting more sleep if I stayed in Dallas! We ended up getting out of bed around 5:30 and got to the hospital just a bit before they took him back, as they were running ahead, I guess. Wow. Two hours of sleep is not nice.

So he went back for surgery and my mom, brother, sister in law, uncle and my dad's best friend all waited in the waiting room and got updates from the nurse about every two hours. Nabeel was working that day (his office is located at the professional building next to the hospital so he was back and forth all day, seeing his patients and coming to see us). The surgery lasted about 5 hours. At around noon, they said he was out of surgery, everything was fine and we could see him in the ICU in about a half hour.

When we went up there to see him, we could only go in one at a time. He had a breathing tube and he was in and out of consciousness. He was tired from the anesthesia, in pain, just didn't look well...but he looked better than I expected. I'm glad he told me to expect to see the breathing tube, otherwise, I'd think something was wrong when I saw that!

He was in the ICU when I left, around 6:30 because visiting hours were over and he needed to rest anyways. I went home and my brother Joey stayed the night with my dad. We'll go back in the morning to see him.