What if it’s worse than I think.

Trigger warning: dead dad, heart stuff, brain stuff, stroke stuff, ICU stuff. He doesn’t make it out of this story alive, and it’s…a lot. I’ll try to keep out the gory details, but…sorry, it’s sad. 

In late April, my dad called to say that he had been having heart palpitations and he was going to see a specialist. He said he was constantly tired and that his heart constantly raced. Like 145+ bpm raced.

I was concerned, of course, but not completely. He’s had serious stuff before and was always fine. He found out he had a faulty valve and, atrial fibrillation due to it, and needed a bypass, so he would have to have open heart surgery. A big deal, but nothing dire (I told myself over and over…this is routine for someone right?). The surgeon had a waiting list and he was close to the top of it because he was an urgent case, but he wasn’t immediately dying so he had to wait. Three to four weeks until the surgery, date pending.

My mom told us he was trying really hard not to make a big deal out of it, but that it was a big deal and he was really worried. We tried to call, to keep track of him, but his normal happy-go-lucky demeanor was replaced with a “not much to report here, I’m so tired I can’t really do anything and it’s killing me” and pushing us off the phone. The week before the stroke, I had only spoken to him once, briefly, and had it on my to-do list to call him again. 

On May 16th, my mom woke up, came downstairs, and he acted really strange. She said he had a muffin that “looked like Cookie Monster ate it” because it was just mangled on the plate. When she noticed his distant shark-eyed stare, she asked him who was playing in the NBA Playoffs, something he should have been able to answer in his sleep. He didn’t answer, so she called 911. She said he was mad that the paramedics wouldn’t let him put on his shoes, and those are the last real words he ever said.

He had two massive brain hemorrhages, one close to his brain stem and one in his temporal lobe. Within a few hours, he had lost his ability to swallow, speak, move his right side, and was pretty confused most of the time, but he was stable. They couldn’t operate because his heart was too weak, but he was stable.

{The first Thing To Remember when a loved one goes into the Neuro ICU is that first and foremost, their goal is survival. In many cases they are there for more care, but in the Neuro ICU, it’s…pretty bleak. I’m not faulting anyone who worked with my dad, they’re angels and were so kind to us, but it wasn’t until almost three days later that anyone told us that his best prognosis was life, nothing more. His quality of life would have been…low. Among many other things, he would need 24/7 care. I know my dad, and that is not the life he would have wanted. He was active. A few weeks before he died he was playing tennis and golf, reffing basketball, dreaming about their next European excursion. This was no life for him. But they saved him the best they could. And if there had been any chance that he would get better, that team could have made it happen. They just…couldn’t.}

We now know that the brain hemorrhages were likely caused from mini strokes months before. It was inevitable, and there wasn’t anything we could have done.

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