After being clinically dead and frantically resuscitated for an hour, my dad was brought back to us.
Well. A version of him was brought back.
Part of him died in that operating room in Casper, and part of me died during the call from my mom telling me Dad was the subject of the Code Blue being repeated on the intercom in the background as she tried to tell me that I needed to come to Wyoming as fast as possible.
Dad's still with us, but new problems have reared their ugly, ugly heads.
This week begins another Very Scary Chapter in the saga that has been Dad's Heart.
Wednesday, my parents fly to South Carolina, where Dad will undergo rigorous, extensive testing at the Medical University of South Carolina to assess how to best replace his aortic valve and address four blocked arteries. He's a ticking time bomb, and regional hospitals wouldn't consider operating until mid-February.
Unacceptable.
So Plan B it is.
I had panic attacks when we first began to realize the scope of how bad it is, but I eventually calmed down.
Until this week. The insomnia and panic have started again.
Did I just say goodnight to my dad for the last time in his house?
The Kid
In 2012, Dad woke up ... different.I remember standing with my brother next to Dad's bed in ICU during his second coma in a week (damn, I hate the sight of intubation equipment).
I started crying when I asked Matt what would happen if Dad woke up and didn't know who we were. Didn't remember that he'd ever had kids that he'd played horsey with or launched across swimming pools or taken camping in the Black Hills.
The fear that a lifetime of memories could be wiped like words from a chalkboard was nearly crippling.
Dad woke up ... and he didn't know who we were.
And I had to smile, take a breath and leave the room.
He remembered he had kids, remembered his siblings, remembered his coworkers and pastor and neighbors ... but none of the people in his room could possibly be those people.
It was hard. It was awful. He always knew who Mom was, but the rest of us took some time to sink through the layers of fog in his mind. First his "Monster Little Sister Dottie," then "Sawawawah." Matt took the longest, and Dad's inability to recognize him took the cruelest forms. Only someone with my brother's personality could take the shit my dad unknowingly dished out in those days without a little resentment.
My dad has been at the cognitive level of a very large, forgetful child since then. Short-tempered, short of memory, long on enjoyment from the television and video games. Unable to drive, sometimes unable to remember that he lives in a different house from where Matt and I grew up, unable to remember conversations he had 10 minutes ago or to keep track of what day it is and sometimes what time of day it is.
He'll knock your socks off if you get him going on history, though. And ask him about his principal's car and the elevator.
Time, Space and Everything In Between
The problems in dealing with a very large child surface most often in the realms of time and space. His sense of time is mostly confined to the immediate, except for the memories that were able to migrate to a long-term storage part of his brain — basically anything that happened 6 years or more before his brain injury.Space is similar — whatever is immediately around him, how it relates to his comfort zone (home, chair, TV, computer, bed), and how long someone tells him it will be until he is able to return to his comfort zone (traveling with Dad can be ... challenging).
Enter our Plan B to send him to MUSC, with familiar faces coming and going at various stages central to the as-yet-unknown Surgery Day and the unending conversations about his problems, his tests, his surgery and the potential complications.
He's very confused and was very scared until today. I think Mom has shifted the focus to "going to visit Matt" and spending time in Not Effing Freezing Wyoming, rather than the surgery.
Which is good.
I gave him a card to take with him, reminding him that however long he's in South Carolina, it's temporary, and our plan always has been for him to come home to Wyoming when it's warmer and when he's healed from his surgery, to live here with Mom and be a healthier person with a better-than-ever heart.
I think it helped. A little. I hope.
An Unexpected Journey
Short story long, I'm heading to Charleston at some unknown point in the next few weeks.On the one hand: A better-functioning heart for Dad! Aunts! Matt! Ericka! Warmth! OCEAN!
On the other hand: That damn nagging voice that hisses from an ugly corner of my brain. It feeds fear and doubt, and it plays the most God-awful scenarios on a loop in my brain.
And I can't shut it off.
I picked a hell of a January to set alcohol and chocolate aside.
