Extended Update on my dad

These past three days have been extremely exhausting.  My mom sent me home from the hospital this afternoon to feed the animals and take a nap.  I laid down, only expecting to sleep for half an hour or so, and woke up two hours later.

Here's what happened:

On Wednesday morning my dad was experiencing symptoms something akin to a heart attack-- terrible chest pain, shortness of breath, etc.  He recognized it almost immediately as a collapsed lung because the same thing had happened to him two years ago and I had had to take him to the hospital.  So my mom drove him to the ER (he wouldn't wait for an ambulance).  They got him and confirmed that it was indeed a collapsed lung, the same lung that had collapsed last time.  Standard procedure for something like this (not usually a difficult case to deal with; in general folks are out of the hospital the next day) is to put a small tube in the top of the chest that will inflate the lung.  But since this was the second collapsed lung for my dad and because they feared there was fluid in his lung, they had to put a much bigger tube in the side of his chest that would not only inflate the lung but also drain the fluid in there.  The diameter of the tube was just about the size of a nickel.

All was well for that and he was soon transferred to an in-patient room.  My mom called and I headed up to spend the day there.

By late afternoon, however, my dad was getting super sick from the pain medicine.  That was something to be rather expected-- he has a history of being unable to take large doses of pain medicine, no matter what it is.  They tried percaced, morphine, oxicodine, etc.  along with various nausea medicines, but nothing would stay down.

I guess all of the heave-hoing caused the tube to move around or something, because the next thing I knew my dad was in more pain than I have ever seen anyone experience...  God I hope I never have to see that again... he was clutching he chest, crying and moaning, it was beyond screaming.  I can still see his face.  The nurses couldn't figure out was wrong and they couldn't give him pain medicine because he had been throwing it right back out.

I stood there, rosary in hand, unable to pray anything more than, "Jesus, Mary, Joseph..."  I just kept saying, "Jesus, give this to me, not him..."  


It was terrifying and it lasted for over half an hour before they finally figured out what was wrong.  Somehow the tube had loosed and air bubbles and pressure were entering his chest...  Thank God it wasn't a heart attack.

He calmed down quite a bit after that episode, but was still in quite a bit of pain and he refused to take any more pain medicine.  By night time, he was able to sleep, so me and my mom headed home fairly late.

We woke up again in the early morning and trekked back up to the hospital.  Well, my mom went about an hour before me and my brother did (he had driven down in the middle of the night).  He and I went around 8:30am.  We got there and there was a huge fuss in my dad's room.  There were three or four doctors (actual medical doctors... which you rarely get to see in the hospital) and five nurses making quite the ruckus.  They told us to wait in the family waiting area.

We could hear snips and pieces of their conversations.  Chest pain was at a ten again, throwing up more blood than they get back into him, have no idea what's causing the bleeding, internal bleeding...

Apparently not long after my mom got there, my dad had started puking up buckets full of blood-- they said at least five or six full buckets.  They tried sticking a tube down his throat to suck up the blood in his stomach (instead of puking it out), but that came out.  They finally got a tube down his nose and it started sucking out the blood.

They called in some gastro-specialist from a neighboring hospital to come in and take a look in his stomach, to figure out where the bleeding was coming from.  That took a few hours and those were especially terrifying because they said the bleeding could be caused by anything from a small tear in the stomach to something life-threatening.

Turns out that all of the heave-hoing from the day before had worn away the lining of his esophagus and that he had torn the lining right at a major blood vessel.  So, once again, we were saved by a minor complication.  The bleeding had stopped and it looks like the lining had healed itself, but that it is still liable for breaking open again if he gets sick again.

The rest of the day was mostly uneventful, except that my dad was in a lot of constant pain (not the super terrible chest pain of before) since he wasn't on any medication.  Eventually the pain got up there in the numbers to the point that, though his lung was not yet fully inflated, the doctors decided to take out his chest tube (the culprit of much of the pain).  That was pretty late last night.  Once the tube was out, he was feeling fine (and ready to get out!).  We left him to have a full night's rest.

This morning I had my job interview for the DRE position and I was hardly in the set of mind to go to it.  The only reason I ended up going was because my dad was so stable the night before and my mom said he was doing perfectly fine this morning.

I went back up to the hospital after my interview and he was looking really good.  Sleeping a lot, but still not eating.  They took another X-ray of his lung and he was hoping to come home this afternoon.  But we needed to wait for the doctors to come in and advise on whether they thought he should have surgery on his lung to prevent this from happening again.

My mom sent me home around 11:30am, to feed the animals and take a nap.  I was exhausted.  Just got a call from her saying that the doctors came and highly recommended the surgery.  So, that'll take place tomorrow morning.  Just praying that that doesn't have any major complications.

Thanks for all of the prayers and please keep them coming!

Now I'm heading back up to the hospital to relieve my mom for a bit.