My father is in the hospital right now. It’s always so awkward for me to see him in there.
My dad had a heart attack at 44. One day at work, he said he had a little indigestion and was gonna leave to go home. There were EMT’s at his work at the time. He worked in the executive offices of a printing publishing company, that had a factory downstairs. Thank God they were there. One doctor at the hospital, later that day, remarked that if he had tried to go home, we’d be at a funeral home instead of a hospital. You gotta love the bedside manner of some of these guys.
It was so massive, he had to have quadruple bypass. Unfortunately for him, he had inherited a bad heart from his father, and he was a smoker himself. He was now diagnosed with congestive heart failure and heart disease. They told him that he had the heart of a 70-year old. Anyway, this was the summer of ’98 and since then, he’s had trouble on and off, but for the most part is okay. Until this week, his CHF was acting up, and he had too much fluid around his heart. They got him to the ER late Thursday night and worked on that by giving him steroids. He had a bad reaction to them and started vomiting, got hives, it apparently wasn’t pretty.
So, all of this goes on and tests are run. Turned out he’s now diabetic, and will have to go on insulin. Because his heart is doing so badly, other parts are starting to be affected, and they think his pancreas is shot. After eating, after not, no matter when they’ve tested him, he hasn’t come down below 350. I know that can’t be good. Once yesterday, they had to draw blood because the meter couldn’t handle the reading. His blood sugar was 598. And he has diabetic neuropathy. My dad is only 51, I didn’t expect for him to be going through all this so young. I know I’m lucky to have my father around, but I also want him around in the future.
There’s nothing I want more than to have my father around for my kids, to have him teach my husband “Dad” stuff. My dad was so great, always involved in our lives, always interested in what we were doing. He was always involved in the parenting, and in taking care of us. I respect and admire him for that. I hope I inherited at least a little bit of his parenting style. If I can be as good of a parent as my dad has been, then I think I’ll be okay.
katharinewink 