The Ups & Downs of Health and Family Life

Hello everyone.  I am sorry for the week of silence, but my family has been dealing with a lot of health issues.  My father has been in and out of the hospital since June with fluid on the heart and lungs, and with the stress of last Friday his latest problems have come on only a week after they took 2.5 liters off of his right lung.

The stress of last Friday was the morning call that my grandma - his mother, was dying in the next few hours and there was nothing the hospital could do.  She had been dealing with her own fluid retention issues.  Her legs & feet had become so swollen that she saturated her shoes.  On top of that she was very sick with the flu.

They had turned her away from her regular hospital, and she ended up back out in the south metro by her assisted living.  She came in with congestive heart failure, respiratory failure, acidosis, Influenza A (confirmed by tests), and an extremely low oxygenation of the blood mirrored with extremely high levels of carbon dioxide.  

The doctors were unable to treat any one thing, because of the other issues present.  The only option they had was to make her comfortable, and put her on a machine that would attempt to adjust the oxygen and CO2 levels in her blood.  At this point she was in an unconscious state, and the few times that she did come to only showed how far gone she was (she thought they were in a town where she grew up).

I drove my father to the hospital, and we came into her room when my aunt was talking with the nurse.  We didn’t want to interrupt, so we just stood at grandma’s bedside and looked at her.  We both reached out and took one of her hands.  Then no more than 15 seconds after we had taken hold of her hands her eyes shot open, and she was looking right at me.  This startled us both as it was clear that she had been out for some time, and the doctors were confident that her situation would not change.

Grandma is always on oxygen, and has been for 15+ years.  They had her in a pear shaped mask that covered her nose & mouth, and it was nearly impossible to hear her ramblings under the noise of the air mask.  By this time my dad, exhausted from the walk to the room, had gone to sit down. 

My grandma continued to talk to me, but I could not hear what she was saying so I knelt down close.  She was asking me, “Did they have to put your dad to sleep?”  I thought this was an odd comment in line with the crazy stuff she had been saying earlier and almost made a joke about taking my dad to the vet, but then I realized that she was talking about the procedure he had just gone through days before. This was a timely and relevant question!  I told her no, and that he actually sat on his bed and talked to us while they did it.  She then went on to tell me she was sad that her nephew Homer had died, which had happened the day before.  

It was obvious that she was awake, aware of current events, and rather chatty!  I pulled up a chair so that I could sit and remain close to hear, and started having a nice conversation.  The down side was that all the talking was having a negative effect on her oxygen levels, so we have to cut it short to let her sleep.  

Throughout the day her levels began to fix themselves.  The doctors could not explain why she was getting better, or why she hadn’t already succumbed to everything.  Her acidosis alone was more than twice the fatal level.  

There is no explanation for what happened, but we didn’t need explanations.  It was a great reminder to my often sometimes-cynical self that miracles do happen, and that the power of prayer is our greatest resource when loved ones are ill.

This is a tool that I will continue to use this week, as my dad has been readmitted into KUMED.  Now he is going back in twelve pounds heavier, which by rough calculation means that those 2.5 liters are back & nearly doubled!  He will be going into surgery on Wednesday morning for a procedure called VATS (video assisted thoracoscopic surgery). It will be more invasive, complicated, and nerve-racking for us all.  

Please pray for the doctors, my father, my grandma, and our family.  I will keep you updated.