Bittersweet Tears and Laughter

What a week this has been so far.  I am not real sure where to start.  If you have kept up with my last post then you know that my Dad ended up having a heart attack and ended up in the hospital while he was in town visiting.  We went from believing Dad would be just fine at times to wondering if he was going to even make it at other times.  We would be laughing our heads off at stuff one minute to fighting back tears the next.  I believe the 2nd floor of our hospital now totally thinks our whole family is a bunch of nuts! 
Let me clarify a few things about Dad from my last post.  Dad had been in the hospital last week where he is from.  He had suffered a TIA, which is a mini-stroke.  They told him the cause of the stroke was from an aneruysm on his brain.  He was discharged the very next day with a clean bill of health as far as cholesterol, sugar, and even tests ran on his heart was amazing.  He made the trip down here to attend campmeeting, but he really should have stayed home to heal up from the stroke.  When he got to my house he had a yellow color to him and no appetite.  If you know my dad then that is major warning signs right there when he doesn't want to eat.  He kept saying it was allergies and sinus trouble that was bothering him.  Sunday morning he was too sick to go to Sunday School with us.  He then asked to go to the hospital because he was smothering in his chest and thought he had pnuemonia.  He assumed it would be a quick trip to er and get an antibiotic and then back to my house again.  Wrong!!!  His blood work showed he had had a heart attack and there was some damage to his heart so they needed to admit him.  They wanted to send him straight back for a heart cath, but Dad explained to the heart doctor that he just had a stroke and had an anerusym on his brain, plus he was told 4 yrs ago by his VA doctor that he would never live through a heart cath procedure because his arteries around his heart were too diseased.  The doctor gets the ball rolling and starts gathering all dad's medical records in from his local hospital and the VA hospital.  After several hours the doctor looks in at Dad and says, "There is no record of a brain anerusym.  The reason you had a stroke was because your heart is beating out of rythm and your heart is not pumping the blood away like it should and you have a small blood clot on your brain."  (I hope no-one with any medical knowledge at all is reading this because I have to be butchering these medical terms, lol).  This should have relieved  us, but it didn't because we knew then they would for sure be doing a heart cath.  Mom said Dad layed his head back on the pillow and tears trickled down his face.  He was scared and I didn't blame him.  So during this time it was around 10:30pm and I needed to pick up my kids from their other mamaw's house.  We were going to get the kids, put them to bed and then I was going to head back and stay with my mom and dad at the hospital.  But much to my dismay, when I picked up the kids Josiah was the only one asleep.  When Tara tried to wake him up she screamed for me.  I ran back there to him and she pulled his shirt up to show me these awful red bumps all over him and he was burnt up with a fever.  He starts screaming, "My brain hurts, my brain hurts", and then he starts puking everywhere.  So instead of going home to bed we made another trip back to er.

 My second trip that day.  We were there until 2:30 and his diagnosis was a measly ear infection.  I had a dr that was pretty much worthless.  "What about the rash?", I asked.  "I don't know, it looks like ant bites.  He'll be fine."  The dr gave him zithromax and discharged him.  We went back home and I dedcided to just stay home and keep an eye on him instead of going back to the hospital.  The next morning Josiah felt alot better so I took the kiddos back to their mamaw's house for the day and headed back to the hospital.  Dad's room was full with my brother and sisters.  When I first walked in I knew we were in for it because the chaplain of the hospital was there and my family already had the giggles.  He was praying a fancy prayer and all our cells phone were ringing all at the same time.  Dad was irritated because he hadn't been allowed to eat since midnight and he was starved.  They had him scheduled for a heart cath and he couldn't eat.  We all tried to entertain him to keep his mind off of it while we waited.  We had some crazy times in there.  We had contests to see who could bend down and touch the floor without bending our knees, who could sit down on the floor the fastest and get up without using our hands for help, and yes even stepping up on the couch and back down the most times.  Maynard entertained us with some cool apps on his phone such as the aging booth, and the beauty tester.  I am ashamed to say that my dad, sick laying in a hospital bed, scored higher than me.  My sister-n-law, who happens to be blonde and blue eyed, scored a perfect 10.  So of course we all demanded retakes and that lasted quite a while. Ha!  One of our highlights of our funniest moments was when the nurse came in with a razor and towels for my dad to shave his groin area to prep for the procedure.  My dear sister Christy had been confused the whole time to what an actual heart cath was.  She kept thinking it was a type of heart surgery and that they would be opening his chest, but we didn't actually know that she was thinking this until a little later.  Dad asked who need to do the actual shaving, the nurse or could he do it.  She said it didn't matter he could if he wanted to or someone could help him.  My sister says, "I got dibs, I'll do it.  Ha ha, I'm going carve my initials."  So we were thinking, eww, she's weird.  So after dad is all shaved and laying back in the bed she once again says something about dad having surgery.  So I do my best to try to explain to her that its not surgery, but a procedure and that they have to go through his groin to go in and take pictures of his heart.  So that is when she realizes that it was not his chest he was in the bathroom shaving.  She is so grossed out especially when she realized she even said she wanted to carve her intitials.  By this time we are literally rolling in the floor laughing.  Dad didn't get took back until around 3 pm that afternoon.  I felt so sorry for him because he was so hungry and was dreading the whole thing so bad.  We all made sure he didn't see us eat m&m or chips, but we got caught every now and then.  The dreaded time came and they wheeled him away and suddenly no-one was laughing anymore.  We all said bye and that we loved him.  A 45 minute procedure kept us waiting for 2 1/2 hours.  We were getting worried sick.  Finally the dr came out and said dad was fine, but the results weren't so great.  Dad's heart arteries were really diseased and he had lots of blockages. At least 2 were 100%.  They couldn't do stents or anything because where it took them so long his body would not have been able to have endured it.  As we had to explain everything to Dad when we seen him, tears once again were rolling down his face.  We quickly cheered him up while we fed him peanut m&m's while he was laying flat on his back.  Then we took turns actually feeding him chicken strips, fries, and apple pie while he was on his back.  Everyone else was putting food on the spoon and handing it to him.  When Christy fed him she tried to spoon feed him like a baby and he was trying to jerk the spoon away from her and well, we had a mess, ya'll! Ha!

We all hung around all evening and then decided to leave to let him get some rest.
Tuesday was a normal day.  Everyone hung around until late afternoon and then headed back to their homes while me, Maynard, and my kids hung out with Papaw the rest of the day.  Dad was feeling pretty good except for some sorness from the procedure.  His sugar got extremely high.  I think the highest was 468, but the nurse said it was normal because of the medication they gave him prior to the heart cath.  Wednesday, Dad got discharged with instructions to be seen by his heart dr to decide what they are going to do in another week.  So it looks like either open heart surgery again or maybe stents.  Either one is dangerous in his condition, so we are begging and praying for a miracle.
I had dropped my kids off with my pastor's wife, sis. Lora Allen, to let them swim in the pool, while I stayed with dad, while he got discharged and seen them off back to their house.  When I picked the kids up my pastor told me Josiah felt like he had a fever.  I felt of him and he was warm, but they had been in the pool all afternoon and was sunburned so I assumed that that was what it was.  A hour later we were sitting around visiting when sis. Lora said, "I'm telling you, Amy, this kid is burning up with fever."  So I had a thermometer with me and I checked his temp.  It quickly rose to 103'.  I gave him some motrin and we took him on to see his dr.  She took one look at him and said, (ya'll ready for this?) "He has CHICKENPOX."  Yep, so them ant bites are really chickenpox and he is very sick.  Even though he was vaccinated he can still have a light outbreak of them.  He is really a sick child.  So now not only do I have to worry about Titus and Amelia catching them, I have to worry about Maynard catching them.  Yep, that's right.  He never had chickenpox when he was little.  Chickenpox is awful on adults I've heard, so fun fun at the Parker's house once again.  Why oh why, must my life constantly be so chaotic????????
And since I have poked fun at my family a few times I will admit to a few blunders of my own to make it fair.
Well, you know how the hospital has the hand sanitizer thingees every few feet down the hallways?  Well, I stood there in the hallway with my hand up in midair trying to get hand sanitizer out of a light fixture.  But, in my defense it was white and had a silver part on it and I just got confused.  And so you know it does run in the family, my mom was caught the next day doing the same thing.

Another blunder was, I was mentioning how our hospital was built like the hospital in Bardstown.  I said, "Oh, what is it called, and then I said, "FLAG-IT".  Everyone started rolling in the floor laughing.  So, I said, "well, how do you say it?"  They all said, "FLA-JAY".  The correct spelling is FLAGET Hospital.  So let's take a poll.  Would you have pronounced it the way I did or would you have said, "FLA-JAY". HA HA