A year ago today...part III

Monday, September 1, 2009

No phone call through the night. I woke up and couldn't believe it. Daddy must still be alive, 40 hours after being given a prognosis of "hours to live." What did this mean?

Jesse and I stopped at My Favorite Muffin to pick up breakfast. I think this was my self-induced therapy for the next several days. I picked up the muffin because it was comfortable and familiar, never mind the fact that where I would take the muffin would be completely uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Never mind the fact that not a single muffin I bought during this visit would actually be eaten.

Jesse and I spent the day at the hospital. Visitors came and went: Daddy's roommate, Rose, his good friend, Guy, several people he worked with at the Post Office (he'd just retired in April after 39 years of service--don't get me started on the injustice of THAT), people from bowling league, people from square dancing clubs. My father had friends, that's for sure. He was one of the most loyal people I have ever known. He didn't know a stranger, and once you were his friend, it was for life. Most of the people who came to visit had known him longer than I've been alive.

I liked the visitors. For one, it was nice to see how much people loved Daddy. Two, it allowed me a few minutes to leave the room without worrying about him being alone. I would use those times to call Gayle & give her a brief update. After Gayle, I called Kim, who was my grandmother's great niece and caretaker for most of 2008. I didn't want to tell Grandma what was happening to her son-in-law until it resolved one way or another. I was lost without Grandma though. My only sanity when Mama had died was Grandma.

Daddy was fairly alert this day. He actually seemed like himself. He wasn't able to speak, but he joked around by his facial expressions, shooting up one eyebrow in the way he always did.

Dr. Brackett, who had performed both the initial surgery on August 19th and the follow-up where he discovered the mass on August 30th. Royce, Jesse, and I sat down with him and I finally began to understand most of what was happening.

Basically, my father's first surgery was a routine procedure to remove a large polyp. This happened on a Tuesday. Five or so days later, he became really sick and couldn't stop vomiting. They put him in ICU, but he was in stable condition. They just wanted to monitor him closely to see why he wasn't recovering.

They ran tests, one of them being a dye test. The dye never came out, so they decided to do exploratory surgery to fix the apparent obstruction. This surgery took place on August 30th, 11 days after the first surgery. It was supposed to be an hour or so, no big deal. I was fully aware of this much, as I had actually talked to my father on the phone a few times since his initial surgery. I knew he was going into surgery at 2:00 pm and should have been out to recovery a couple of hours later.

When Dr. Brackett opened Daddy up, he found something shocking that he had never seen before (and he was a seasoned doctor...not sure how long exactly, but he had white hair so you figure it out). He found an inflammatory mass tangled up in large veins that most of us do not have. My father, according to Dr. Brackett, had a unique anatomy with his colon on the left side instead of the right and these veins. Dr. Brackett didn't know for sure what had caused the mass but thought perhaps it was this unique anatomy. I have other ideas, like a knife slip.

Because of the veins, the mass couldn't be removed so Dr. Brackett attempted to resection Daddy's colon to bypass the mass. But he didn't really think it would work. Essentially, Daddy had a dead bowel and we were waiting to see if a miracle would happen. Dr. Brackett came out of surgery and informed Royce that Daddy had hours to live.

Here we were, two days later and Daddy was still alive. Nothing about Daddy was conventional. I wasn't the least bit surprised to hear that his colon wasn't like the rest of us. By Monday afternoon, Dr. Brackett expressed disbelief that Daddy was still with us and said that maybe a miracle would happen. He estimated Daddy's chances of survival at 1%, but said the septic shock (self-poisoning) that was going on in Daddy's body could perhaps go on a few days longer before he died.

I was glad Jesse was there to remember what the doctor had told us. As people called my cell, concerned friends who wanted to see how I was doing, I handed the phone to Jesse. Eventually, I gave him the cell. Just answer it and talk to them. Answer their questions so I don't have to.

Jesse was scheduled to leave the next day to return to the brand new job he had started the week before. He decided to stay an extra day, for which I was very grateful. We went to Amy's parents' house, one of my second homes, for a home-cooked meal and some relaxation before returning to Daddy's apartment for the night.

To be continued...