A Season of a Lifetime

Well, this is tragic at this time of year.

For those who have recently been praying for Baby James, thank you. James is currently doing very well, keeping his momma and poppa busy throughout the hustly, bustly season. But no sooner had little James' problems disappeared that my family and loved ones faced another issue.

A week or so after James' early birth, my father suffered a heart attack. Significant enough that he went to the hospital in response to the pains in his chest, the heart attack left him mostly unscathed. After the stabilizing, he was flown to a nearby hospital for an angiogram that was done with some minor complications due to an internal bleed in his lower abdomen, the result of a minor operation he underwent while my sister was in the hospital having James. Te angiogram was performed, and dad had an angioplastic device (called a stent) inserted in the area that caused the heart attack.

I visited him in the hospital almost immediately on his being flown back to town, and he said crazy things like 'When it's your time to go, it's your time to go and that's all there is to it.' That upset me. I agreed with him, but inside I told myself that it was crazy talk. He had used that phrase before, never about himself, but this time he took it personally and spoke with a conviction I had never heard him use on the issue. He was back at home by the next monday.

Wednesday we had a get-together to celebrate Val's birthday. Dad was clearly diffrent in his mannerisms, and was very quiet. We joke a lot in our family, so I took a few pictures of him looking grumpy. Shortly thereafter, he complained of chest pains and he and my mom left for the hospital after only being at the party for a few minutes. The diagnosis was that he was having another heart attack, and that the angioplastic device didn't deploy properly for one reason or another. The doctor, whom I know personally, advised my dad of this and told him there was a powerful medication (referred to as 'TNK') that could act as a clot buster, but that there were significant risks associated to the side effects of the drug, such as the rupturing of major blood vessels. Primarily, the doctor was concerned about the complications that were noted during the angiogram of a week previous. My dad would have agreed to take the medication.

The clot-buster drug worked! The heart attack subsided and dad returned to a somewhat stable state when they decided to fly him back to the out-of-town hospital for another angiogram. We are told he walked his way into the elevator, got to the right floor, made his own way to the CT Scan department. Waiting for his CT Scan, dad became non-responsive. They rushed him into for his CT Scan and realized that a blood vessel had burst in his brain. Dad was having a hemoraghic stroke, and the saddest part is that it was the opposite side of his brain that was affected during a previous stroke in 2000. His right-side limbs were completely non-sensitive.

For information, the risk of such a thing happening due to administration of TNK has been explained to me to be approximately 1 in 20 or 25 patients, approximately 5%. The heart attack had odds of approximately 25% of killing my dad on Wednesday.

My mom, sister, James, and I drove to visit him at the out-of-town hospital on Thursday afternoon. My mom and sister were clearly upset. Dad was on a intubated, breathing of a respirator and extremely sedated. A few times, he opened his eyes and we all genuinely got the impression he recognized us. He was being tube-fed, tube-breathed, tube-cleaned, and tube-drained. This upset us all. We met with doctors, and were told that he was on a very thin fence right now, and time would tell the tale of how things would play out and what kind of recovery, if any, could be expected. They needed to have us see his condition so we could make the decisions that had to be made in the future.

Friday night we returned home, hopeful that we would be returning to the out-of-town hospital at least 2 or three times over the next weeks. That is, until Sunday came.

Sunday we received a call that dad was undergoing a third heart attack, and this upset me. The doctor's couldn't do anything to help, and we had a DNR order put on him. How much can the human body bear, anyways? He returned to the home hospital on Tuesday morning, where he remained intubated in the Intensive Care Unit. Another meeting with doctor's after spending time with him in his state, and the decision was made to remove Life Support from him. Essentially, we were saying that we wanted the breathing tubes taken out, and we wanted him to pass away as his quality of life was too far removed.

His body was so damn resilient. He used to be a pace-setter for the local cross country ski teams, played farm-league soccer in europe, biked through the woods all summer long in pursuit of mushrooms and blueberries. The tubes came out, and he kept breathing, the beat kept going, his eyes would still open at times. Val and I spent three nights at the hospital this past week, and my mom and sister did the best they could to relieve us, just being with him to make sure that he knew we weren't going to leave him to die alone.

By Wednesday afternoon, dad was taken out of ICU and put in a private room. All that could be done was relieve pain, so he was given a relatively steady dose of morphine and sedatives to keep him at peace. At times there was huge amounts of joy we felt when he opened his eyes, but they were often always met with eyes that spoke of a deep pain. There were a number of times I had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

I chose Thursday night to propose to Valerie. I asked for her hand in the hospital parking lot at about 9:00pm. I had not planned on asking until Saturday, but we both knew that it was important that we tell dad about the news, and show him the ring the next time he opened his eyes, knowing especially that he may never open them again.

The nurses were all fantastic, and we were able to say goodbye to my dad over the course of the week. We know he knows how we felt about him, and we trust the Lord took a tremendous opportunity to cause him to reflect on his life, and mixed justice with mercy.

I was fortunate to have been in the room when he passed. Val was sleeping in a lounge while I spoke with the nurse after having just cleaned up a failed system in his tired, exhausted body. Dad took one large gasp, then 30 seconds passed. Then another gasp. Then, remarkably, he craned his neck - something his paralysis from the stroke wouldn't allow him to do - as if trying to catch a glimpse of something in the distance. The nurse left as I ran out the door to get Val. I enetered the room with her, only to hear my dad give a small shallow puff of a breath, and then he passed away from our time. His eyes opened slowly as his muscles relaxed, and sure enough, one more tear had pooled which I did not try to wipe away.

My hope is that Someone far greater than I was hoping to look after that one.

I miss you dad.