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Pops came home from the hospital on Monday, July 16. He is, and will continue to be, on oxygen full-time. He went to see his cardiologist on Thursday. The news is not good. If he is lucky and doesn't have any more trouble such as he's had for the past few weeks, he may possibly have 6 - 12 months.
I go to their house every day after work and feed his dogs and cats, do the laundry and anything else that needs to be done around the house. It's tough after working all day but they've done so much for me that I couldn't possibly say no. Unfortunately for them I'm all they have. I do the best I can but I wonder if it's enough.
Shortly after my last post my dad had to go to the hospital. Pops has not been well for many years. He's had 2 quadruple by-pass surgeries. He also has emphysema, spinal arthritis and osteoporosis. He had been coughing really badly and having trouble breathing for several days. Mom finally convinced him to go to the ER. They admitted him and he was in for 5 days. The day he came home, June 28, he seemed to feel fairly well. He went to the drug store and had his prescriptions filled, ate lunch and fed his dogs. He laid down to rest and woke up a couple of hours later not feeling well. Mom helped him to the bathroom and he began vomiting blood and having diarrhea. Again she had to talk him into going to the hospital the next morning.
After examination in the ER they determined he had a bleeding ulcer. It seems that during the previous hospital confinement someone had given him aspirin...on top of his blood thinners. They began giving him transfusions and went into his stomach and put clamps on the ulcer to try to stop the bleeding. He was moved to ICU.
Friday morning, June 29, Mom called at 6am...the hospital had called and said he was not doing well and that the family needed to get there ASAP. My sons, daughter-in-law and I all took off up there. I called my sister in Atlanta and she got on the road too. We were at the hospital for 12-13 hours. He stabilized and we came home that evening. He was doing so well on Saturday that they were even talking about moving him out of ICU and putting him in a regular room on Sunday.
At about 8:30am Sunday morning Mom called and he was in trouble again and the hospital had advised that the family needed to come quickly. Apparently the strain of losing all that blood and undergoing the procedure to clamp the ulcer had put too much strain on his heart and he had had a heart attack. Since he still had the aspirin in his blood (Dr. told us it takes 7 days for 1 aspirin to clear out of your blood stream) they could do nothing to treat the heart attack.
He did finally stabilize and was moved out of ICU on July 4. We don't know when he will be able to come home. We are hoping it will be soon. There will be a lot of restrictions. He will basically be bed-ridden. He's going to need oxygen and a hospital bed. His room will need to be as dust-free as possible. He will not be allowed to drive and cannot go into his woodworking shop without a mask. It's going to be so hard on him to give up what little freedom of movement he's had.
I am just completely worn down.
