rollercoaster ride.

my dad is back in the hospital already.
so i changed my plans, sent emails to the profs to whose classes i was supposed to go to this week, and am still here up north, holding my family together.

at 2am monday morning night, he went off to the er with more chest pain and was re-admitted to the hospital and put back on intravenous nitro and heparin straight away.
his ecg was fine. his blood stats were fine. this was panic, sheer panic.
and who wouldn't have panicked?

imagine having chest pain for the first time in your life and being admitted to the hospital immediately. imagine being in the hospital for two weeks, unsure about what's wrong with you, being told to not move at all. imagine getting the final diagnosis of instable angina pectoris and that you'll have to get quadruple bypass surgery. imagine then being sent home. "see you at that ribcage cutting opening/heart lung machine using/heart stopping operation. in TWO weeks." "and no, behave like you NORMALLY do."

sure.

i had expected my dad to not take the waiting period well, to be scared out of his mind.
however, i hadn't really expected him to be re-admitted to the hospital this soon. dome to think of it, though, this is very much him. he's a wuss. he can't even watch er. he can't talk about his feelings either, and he's easily frightened. this is not surprising.

i spent pretty much all of saturday at home with him, and he was just not well at all. he behaved like a sick person. like a very sick person. even though his docs had advised him to behave normally, to move normally, to get out. my dad, however, didn't. he didn't speak normally. he didn't move normally. he kept holding his left chest. he wasn't willing to talk about what was wrong with him, what he felt.

fear you can't talk about, fear you don't name is bigger, more evil, more scary fear.

back in the hospital, my dad is much better now.
he's sitting in his hospital bed, despite the nitro and the hep, reading, being annoyed by the guy in his room, annoyed by the nurses that always bring injections and needles.
but he's relaxed. really relaxed. you can actually talk to him for real, even discuss the operation, talk about his feelings a little.

truth be told, i am more relaxed with him in the hospital, too, and so is my mom. she's much better now, and i hope it's aprtly thanks to me. i've been feeding her, and feeding her information, ordering her books, sending her off to get massage.
she has been doing her best to speed up the process of my dad getting an op date soon, calling docs at the cardio clinic that she knows. i expect him to be operated sometime this week. or so i hope.
i'll stay till then, till he's out of intensive care at least. it's the least i can do.

so i am holding up, and everyone is, and it could be much worse. much much worse, actually.

how good that you never know what's ahead though.