Prayers for My Dad

My dad had a quadruple bypass today. This came out of nowhere so we're all still in shock. He's in a lot of pain but did very well in the surgery so he should have a full recovery. The best news of all is that he had absolutely no heart damage at all..Just very blocked arteries.

Yesterday my mom called me mid-day at home. Pip and I had just come home with groceries and I almost didn't answer the phone. So glad I did. I knew instantly something was wrong when I heard my mom trying to compose herself to talk. They had gone to dinner the night before when my dad starting getting chest pains. My mom took him to the emergency room. He was admitted right away. Yesterday morning after several tests, they determined 3 of his arteries were at least 60% blocked. Since my dad is healthy, eats right and takes lots of walks, they think it was from all of the smoking he did for almost 30 years. He stopped about 20 years ago but it was too late. The damage was done.

After I hung up with my mom, I called my brother, then my husband. I picked up Hunter after school, came home, packed up Piper and me then drove from Vegas to Phoenix in record time. I felt horrible for leaving Hunter but he started school yesterday and I didn't want to yank him out without knowing exactly what was going on with my dad. He's 14 so he can take care of himself after school until Paul comes home.

5 hours later, I dropped Pip off at my mother-in-law's and raced to my mom's house. It was about 11pm at that point. My brother had come in from Tucson, we were all emotional and exhausted so we went to bed.

This morning we got up at 5:30a to be at the hospital by 6:15a. My dad was going into surgery at 7:30 so we wanted to spend some time with him before he went in. Long story short- his surgery was rescheduled till 12pm. My uncle (dad's brother) came so we all spent the morning with my dad laughing and talking. My dad was in a great mood, joking with the nurses and us. He said he was ready to get this done and just start feeling better. He'd been fatigued for so long now which we now know was attributed to this.

Watching him go into surgery was one of the scariest moments of my life. Seeing him afterwards was even worse. My dad, my daddy. Looking so pale and frail and even worse seeing him in so much pain was more than my mom, brother and me could bare. We were there when they took the breathing tube out which was so rough for him. They told him not to talk for awhile but he tried to talk right away. My dad loves to talk. It made us all smile.

My oldest son Jake came to the hospital so my dad go to see him for a bit. He is 19 now and moved back to Phoenix after he graduated from high school. My ex-husband Mike (the boys' dad) even came and sat with us awhile while my dad was in recovery. That in itself was huge for all of us.

They ended up taking 2 veins out of my dad's legs instead of one because they were weak. The veins are needed for the bypasses. In the end, they did the quadruple instead of the triple but as I said, he sailed through it as best as a patient could. He was breathing great after the tube was out, his blood work looked great, his nurses were amazing so even though we were extremely upset seeing him in so much pain, we knew he was in good hands. He has 6 weeks of recovery ahead of him but the hardest part is over.

I'm here at my mom's now getting ready for bed. Don't know next time I'll post..Please send prayers for my dad. He's going to need them for the days ahead.