An Orphan Now

 The Sunday after my birthday heralded the beginning of the end of life as I knew it. In the wee hours of the morning, Daddy showed up at my house needing to go back to the emergency room. He'd tried calling me multiple times, but my phone had been on silent because I was tired of getting texts from my friends. We'd had my "birthday party" Saturday and I had been trying to be fully present with my family and they the friend group text was blowing up with just idle chit chat. So I had silenced my phone and forgot to put the ringer back on before I went to bed. And trust, when I realized my dad had to come to my house in the middle of health crisis to get me up to take him to the ER, I was devastated. My dad has been my top priority for the past two years. So yeah I was devasted that I missed that. 

But we made it the ER where they x-rayed his chest, pumped him full of lasix and decided to admit him to prepare him for stents in his heart later in the week. So Daddy and I spent four days in the "big" hospital an hour away and he had stents placed on Wednesday. He did fine and they said the stents would help improve the heart valve he needed to replace. They set us up with a consultation on April 20 with the surgeon and sent us home on Thursday. He and I went to see him mom and then later that afternoon we road his ATV around his deer fields and fed the deer. We made plans for getting him a new recliner so that he'd have it after his surgery. We were planning for the future.

Friday morning I got to his house to starting cleaning the area around the front door so that when we to him a recliner we'd be able to move it into the house easily. While I was there, he informed me that his dog, Chrissy, appeared to be dripping blood when she pees and had devloped a bad cough. So I took her to the vet and when I got home, he wasn't feeling well again. Tired and felt like his breathing was a little labored. So I ran back to town to get him some meds and then spent the night with him in case he needed me. By Saturday morning he was ready to go back to the ER because he was short of breath again and hadn't slept at all because of it. Every time he dozed off, he'd wake up gasping and then it would take him a little while to catch his breath.

So off to the ER we went. This time they kept him in observation over night and pumped him full of lasix again and sent us home on Sunday. They told us he'd have to eat an extremely low sodium and low liquid diet because of the lasix they had him on. When he asked what to do about the shortness of breath they basically told him to suck it up. His oxygen levels were fine and it was all in his head.

So, that Sunday we stopped to see my granny on the way home and then went back to his house and watched a couple episodes of television shows and talked a while. He decided he'd be fine on his own so I went home to sleep in my own bed. 

That Monday morning I ran to town to pick him up some things and while I was there, he started texting me that he couldn't breathe. He needed air. So I left town, came home, and we went to a different ER. This time his bloodwork showed that he was having a heart attack but his EKG and Echocardiogram and things looked okay. They decided to admit him to do another heart cath in case something had gone wrong with his new stents. That first night in the new hospital was ROUGH. He was still struggling to breathe, even though his oxygen levels were fine. So they gave him a dose of Adivan to calm him down. All the Adivan did was cause him to have some terrible hallucinations. The nurse we had that night was amazing and really helped us work through it. They ended up putting him on a BiPap machine to help him feel as though he were getting more oxygen.

The next morning, he was better. I told him about his wild hallucinations, and we had a good laugh about it. They had him on regular oxygen and he slept off and on the rest of the day and that night. My middle sister came over and sat with us for the day and he slept through most of her visit. Wednesday morning he seemed much better and my oldest sister and her husband came over to visit. Daddy was alert and talking most of the day. That night, though, he couldn't sleep again. His breathing wasn't quite so bad, he just couldn't sleep and that made him anxious. 

That Tursday, they did the second heart cath and found nothing wrong with his stents. They did discover, though that the bad heart valve was far worse than the other hospital had noted. It was decided that they'd take over and he'd have the surgery in two weeks instead of four or five. In the meantime, his shortness of breath got worse and worse and he eventually stayed on the BiPap for most of the time, meaning we couldn't really talk to each other. But as long as he felt okay, I was okay with that. They were still talking about sending us home the following Monday, though, and I began to panic. He was so weak at this point and he felt like he couldn't breathe without the BiPap...a machine they said we would not be able to have at home. 

He managed okay Friday and Saturday, but by Sunday even the BiPap wasn't helping him. They'd given him some laxatives Saturday to make him poop and all the movement and cleanup caused him to get into such and agitated state that he just couldn't recover. They kept telling him, "You're oxygen level is fine. It's just that bad valve putting pressure on your chest making you feel like you can't breathe" as though that was supposed to make him feel better. 

Well, he got into such a state Sunday that he begged them to move him to ICU and intubate him. At first they refused anything. Offered him Morphine for oxygen hunger but then decided against that. I don't know what happened next but the next thing I know they WERE moving him to ICU. My sisters and brothers-in-law had been downstairs eating lunch when all this went down and by the time they got back he was being moved.

When we finally were taken up to the ICU to see him, they had finally calmed him down and realized that they had overdosed him on a bloodpressure medication they'd been giving him for his AFib. While I was rushing to him, one of the doctors stopped me and said they'd gotten notice that UAB hospital in Birmingham had a bed in CICU for him and they could give him the surgeries he needed quicker than they could. I gave the okay and then about an hour later, he was airlifted by helicopter to Birmingham.

It was one of the scariest things I'd ever seen, watching them load my daddy via stretcher onto a helicopter and for the first time in two weeks, I wasn't going with him. 

Thankfully, my oldest sister lives in Tuscaloosa, an hour or so away from Birmingham. So she drove me in my car to her house and my niece drove my sister's vehicle home. Once in Alabama, it was getting dark and my sister wasn't sure about making the drive in the dark so my niece's boyfriend drove us to see him at UAB. The were just assessing him when we got there and he was mostly calm while on the BiPap. I asked him if he'd be okay if I stayed with my sister for the night. The CICU would allow me to stay, but there was nowhere to sleep and I was exhausted. He gave me the okay and we went back to my sister's house where I crashed like the dead.

The next morning, we got up at five and made the drive back to B'ham to see him. They had him off the BiPap and on regular oxygen and had a game-plan in place on how to get him fixed up and back home with us. They were going to start dialysis get the kidney toxins out of his body...his kidneys had started shutting down on Saturday...something the other hospital had noticed but hadn't treated.

Anyway, they had to install a port in his neck for the dialysis and, unfortunately, when the made the incision, they nicked his corraded artery. It wasn't where it was supposed to be so it was no fault of the doctor. But they had to intubate him because his neck started swelling and they were worried about his airways being blocked. Then they had to do surgery to repair the artery. And then they had to install a port in the other side of his neck for a right heart cath. Needless to say, Monday was just as tense and scary as Sunday had been. We didn't get back to my sister's house until around 10 or 10:30 and then was back at the hospital by 8 the next morning. 

He was still on the ventilator under light sedation, meaning he was awake enough to follow simple commandes to squeeze hands and things like that. He was able to raise his arms to point to things he needed but his eyes were closed. He pointed to his feet one time, and nodded when we asked if he wanted socks. Then when I got ready to leave that night,  told him I loved him and he nodded his head. When my middle sister told him she had to leave, he shook his head no.

That was the last bit of communication we had from Daddy. 

Wednesday they did a TEE test to see if his valve was leaking too much to put a balloon in to stabilize his heart while we waited on the valve replacement surgery. They had to further sedate him for that and the news they came back with was worse than we could have imagined. Turns out he had TWO bad heart valves that two other hospitals and his regular cardiologist missed. So they said not only would there not be a balloon, he was no longer viable for the valve replacement. His kidneys being in the state they were in and his overall general health just wouldn't support such an invasive procedure. Basically we were told he was going to die if they took him off the ventilator and they'd give us time to spend with him before we decided what to do.

Thursday we spent the whole day with him and by the end of they told us that there was a sliver of hope. His kidneys were finally starting to show improvement so they were going to monitor him for the next 48 hours and if they continued to improve, they would do the replacements and a bypass on his heart. So we went home Thursday feeling hopeful.

But hope is a wicked beast and it was not meant to be.

When we got to the hospital Friday morning, they informed us that not only had his kidneys regressed over night but his liver was starting to fail. They told us to get whoever needed to see him there as quickly as possible. It was while we were working on getting my nieces there that his heartrate and blood pressure started dropping. We watched in horror as our Daddy died right in front of us.

I was in the room when Mama died, but nothing could have prepared me to watch the monitors showing him actively dying. 

We are, of course. devastated. We lost our only remaining parent. The parent who got us through the nightmare of losing our Mama. The parent I relied on so heavily for everything. He and I had become a team over the past two years. He relied on me and I relied on him. For companionship. For affection. For a sympathetic ear. And he took such amazing care of me. Keeping up with my yard. Paying for things I needed. And when Libby died, he carried us to the vet that day and then insisted on paying for the cremation. He was always checking in on me, making sure I was okay. He was always so sympathetic when menstrual cramps took me out. Even when we were in the hospital that second week, and mother nature decided to hit me. He was in the hospital bed worrying about wether or not he could sleep or breathe and STILL he worried over me, seeing me in pain. He made sure the nurses made sure I had a pillow and blanket. And worried over if I was able to sleep or not.

I still have my sisters. My nieces. My nephew. I even still have my 89-year-old Granny. But I've lost the one person who loved me more than he loved himself. The one person who insisted I let him know when I got home when he knew I was going out at night. The one person who cared about even he smallest aspects of my life. I don't know who I am or what I'm doing without him.

And now we're left trying to figure out all the physical stuff he left behind. His house, the vehicles, his dogs. His aunt--my great-aunt--has been so wonderful in helping with the dogs and offering help with other things. But it's still all so overwhelming. I have all these people telling me they're happy to help with other things but then they say, let me know if you need me which leaves me to actually have to ASK them for the help. I never had to ask Daddy. He just saw things I needed doing and just did it. I HATE asking for help. So now I'm left with all these "offers" and the paralyzing feeling of not knowing what to do.

Anyway, we laid my dear PapaBear to rest yesterday and plenty of folks showed up to honor him. Seeing him in the casket made it all far too real. He's not coming back. He is with my dear Mama, where he's wanted to be for the past two years. 

And I am jealous.