When you are sitting in a hospital room and you really aren’t sure what to do and the nurses are giving you the stink eye instead of laughing when you make the Wilford Brimley diabeetus jokes, you do what any loving daughter would do. You go out and buy your dad a 32gb ipad and put all sorts of fun stuff on it like movies and games and apps and ANGRY BIRDS so you he can have something to play with while he hurries up and waits in his bed in the ICU.
Because, really, that’s what we are doing up at St. Joseph’s. Hurrying up and waiting.
Yesterday, my dad had a heart attack. He was home alone and called the 911 and crawled outside to meet the ambulance. Yesterday, he thought he was going to die. Yesterday, I got on a plane.
We know he’s feeling okay because he’s laughing and yelling and complaining about the terrible hospital food and is dreaming of margaritas. BUT, it sort of feels like a false sense of security, because he’s nowhere out of the woods. Now, I don’t understand anything that M. Night Cardiacamalan talked to my dad about..because my dad is an MD and my dad has had three prior myocardial infarctions (I know that one! It means HEART ATTACK) they were talking shop and throwing out acronyms left, right and center. But, it seems that there are several procedures involved. One of these involves them basically recreating a heart attack. FOR REAL. They are going to give my dad another heart attack. And one involves surveying the damage to his heart but the last time he had one of those “procedures” they tore something inside his heart and gave him more damage, so you can imagine how keen he is to have that done again. But, lucky for him it can’t be done until something happens with his blood and something else happens because of the coumadin that he was taking but now he’s not. No, I don’t know what any of that means. But, I do know that his blood sugar levels were too high. Way too high. Like 400 high. And no one is happy about that. He needs a defibrillator. He needs a pacemaker. He needs to go back on insulin.
I am very worried. We are all very worried.
I have to go home tomorrow. I have a family and a job and a conference to speak at and carpools and homework and play practice and hockey and hip hop and playdates. I know in my head that this makes sense. Go home to your family, Ali. Go home and get some real-life hugs from some very special people. Go home until you need to be here. Until the procedures. But, I AM AN ANGRY BIRD. I am an angry bird and I want to effing destroy those stupid pigs my dad’s heart problems.
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