What A Day!

DISCLAIMER: All photos in this blog post were used by permission of sick person!

This morning I picked up daddy to take him for his outpatient surgery. On the way there, just before getting onto the highway, my front left tire went flat. Flat as a pancake! I called mom and she left work to pick daddy up where we were stuck while I stayed behind and waited on my hubby to change my tire. I'm thankful I had a friend to call when I had my nervous breakdown, which has been happening quite frequently lately. She was sweet to listen to my blubber over the phone.

And then several of my friends who were working at the church stopped and prayed for my dad and for me too. That meant so much. I could feel your prayers, y'all, and they were appreciated. I'm thankful for praying friends.

My brother, John, knew where we were so he stopped in to help with the tire change. Bruce had already finished the job, but John was ready and willing to give a helping hand if necessary. I'm thankful for a husband who can change a tire and a brother who is always there to lend a helping hand to me.

Bruce and I switched vehicles so he could take my car to have the spare replaced. So I took off in the van while John followed me to the hospital. When we arrived, mom had taken daddy to the emergency room instead of admissions because she was having to pull over to the side of the road due to him needing to continually vomit with severe pain to the stomach and back. They took him back immediately and began running tests and hooking him up to monitors. We spent the better part of the day watching him go in and out of the emergency room for tests, waiting on tests results, and meeting doctors. I'm thankful for all of those who worked on my daddy and were so nice and prompt in getting him to his tests and reading the results. And for the doctors and nurses that were able to find what his problem was.

We were all pretty tired. I'm thankful that the Lord allowed us all to be there together for daddy and for each other.


Once the nurse shot daddy up with finnigrin and dilaudid, he was pretty much stoned out of his mind and wasn't feeling anymore pain! I'm thankful for pain medicines that helped daddy rest, considering he hasn't rested well in a couple of months because of his pain.


In between waking up and falling back to sleep, he was so thirsty but wasn't allowed to drink anything. So we kept a damp cloth in his mouth. His little lips were so dry. I'm thankful for water to help quench his thirst.



Besides CAT scans and ultrasounds, they were also coming in for blood work to check all of his levels. I'm thankful they were able to read blood levels to help them draw more of a conclusion to his overall problem.


His first Doctor was Dr. Wagner who turned him over to Dr. Mancini. She was very nice and told us that his gall bladder needed to be taken out. We were all relieved that it wasn't something worse and that they were going to be able to do something about it soon. He's been in so much pain recently and so sick, that he's lost 20 pounds this month. I'm thankful for doctors that had wonderful bedside manners and took the time to talk TO us and not AT us.


They admitted him to a room to watch him overnight and administer antibiotics through IV. I'm thankful that daddy is in the hosptial tonight where he'll be watched over and taken care of and administered drugs as he needs them.



By the time we got him to his room, he was still not feeling any pain. As a matter of fact, he was fairly alert and cracking jokes. Tomorrow morning, they will take him down for his dialysis treatment. They'll allow him a little time to recover from that and then they'll do his gall bladder surgery. Thursday morning they will do the initial surgery on his dialysis port. So please pray for him, especially over the next couple of days. I know he's in for an ordeal, but I also know that the Lord is in control of all of this and that daddy is going to feel so much better once all of this is taken care of. I'm thankful that when I left his side this evening, he was smiling.


As if things couldn't get any worse, I was backing out of the hospital parking garage when I hit a huge cement column and messed up the van. I was able to salvage the blinker shield, but I don't know how I'm going to break this to Bruce! *SIGH* :I I'm thankful this wasn't worse than what it was and that no one else was involved.