Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 12:09:55 -0500 From: Blonde Blue eyes Subject: True Love 7 I just stood there in the door-way frozen in place, staring into the bedroom, for what seemed like hours, but in reality wasn't more than 10 seconds. Every single emotion ran through my mind and body, there he was laying face down on the bed, the sheet covering the lower half of his body. But it aside from all that, I still had a feeling in me that something wasn't right, and finally I walked into his room, and up towards the bed, and as I stared at his body, it finally hit me as to what was wrong. There was no movement in him what so ever, the body in front of me was limp. I realized that he wasn't breathing, and as the seconds ticked by I was wasting time not doing anything. I finally called 911, and then threw him over on his back and started doing CPR, but as hard as I tried, I couldn't get him to start breathing. Finally I heard the door bell, threw on a pair of shorts jumped down the steps and let the paramedic in, of course by this point my ability to speak or do anything productive was quickly diminishing, and I just showed the guy where he was and finally broke down into tears and was just pacing back and forth in the bedroom as the guy continued to try and get him to breathe again. And as a blessing from God, I heard him cough. I ran over to him in the blink of an eye and held his face, although got pushed out of the way by the emt -- he was saying something to me, what it was I had absolutely no idea -- all I really cared about was the fact that the man in front of me was breathing and still alive. Finally in coming to the few senses that I had left in me they lifted him off the floor and took him in the ambulance, told me where they were taking him -- I nodded my head, ran to my room threw on shoes, and literally flew out of the house into the car and to the hospital-joke about it is that I actually made it there before they did. As I ran into the ER, they pulled up, and as the back doors opened and the stretcher rolled out, and again what I saw, I almost collapsed myself. An oxygen mask, tubes running from his arms. It was my worst nightmare coming true, the thought of losing him, and truly being alone the rest of my life, with nothing than myself. And I started cursing him, then myself, then him, and then anyone else I could think of to blame for this -- and then thought again, how fucking selfish that was. In the midst of desperation and moments of insanity, one of the male nurses came up to me and put his arm around me and said something to me that I will never forget "Your partner is unconscious -- but alive and stable for the time being." The second part of that statement did not register in my head, all I heard was `your partner'. I looked up at the guy, and actually smiled but then said to him "He's actually my father, but thanks for telling me." After I said that, he gave me an odd look and just said `Oh, sorry'. (As a side note, my father and I look very little alike -- I took about 95% of my looks from my mother, other than my height, and hair color which is like my father, I look completely like my mother.) And I just looked back at him again, and smiled, and asked if I could see him, and if a physician had seen him yet, and he just nodded and took me to him. I followed him into one of the bay's and again the being that I saw in front of me was not someone that I knew. Hooked up to all of these monitors, and tubes running from here and there, this was not the man I knew as my father. I just kept shaking my head, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Finally, as I myself came back to reality, I now needed to know what the hell happened. Of course finding a physician in an ER at 330am is not exactly easy, but finally was able to track down the one that had evaluated him. I grabbed the man by the arm, and told him the only person he was going to be talking to was me, I wanted the entire story from start to beginning and not to dance around or give me any bullshit. And what he said felt like that knife being but back into me and being twisted and turned again. "Your father had a massive heart attack, from what we believe was a blockage in the left, valve. While he is stable at the moment, in being brutally honest with you, I can't say to you right now that he will survive or not. He is scheduled for a number of tests that should give us a better idea of how this happened. At the moment he is on a blood thinner that is allowing the blood to pass through. If in fact it is a blockage, if he is strong enough we'll take him in for surgery and remove it. But again, that is not something that can be done if it will cause more harm than not. But don't lose faith yet, give him a chance to recover for a bit, I think he'll come around soon, and then we'll go from there. But I will tell you this, it was you who saved his life, if you hadn't found him when you did, he would have died." And then he walked away. And I just stood there in a state of shock once again, and kept asking myself why? Why him? Why now? As I stood there again just staring at my father, laying in a bed, basically clinging to life, I looked up to god and just asked for a one favor -- to just keep him alive. I've never been a religious person, I've never gone to services, was always told I should believe what I want to. But today I asked God, to just keep him alive. Nothing more. I'd rather have him alive and in a coma next to me then in a coffin underground. And then, even further I realized, there really was no other family. I would call my brothers but I haven't heard from them in month's and lord knows where they are. But that's it. There's no one else, my grandparents are dead, and my father was an only child, and my mother's side well, non-existent for the past 17 years. So wow, yes if I lost him, I really would be alone. I couldn't let that happen -- a selfish thought? Maybe. But I wasn't going to let it happen I didn't care what it would take or to what lengths I would have to go, I wasn't losing him. It was at that point that I realized that once again, my life had just taken another turn down another path, that I had no clue where it was going to lead me to. Finally, after hours of sitting in the ER he was moved into a room. I asked why not critical care, where he would be consistently monitored, and have a full time one-on-one nurse, and the response was, "he's in a coma now, there's no reason for it, we can watch him from the desk on camera, if anything changes, we'll know." So there it was, my hero, my want and desire, laying in a hospital bed, in a coma. And I had no idea what to do. But one thing I did know, I wasn't going to leave his side any time soon. So with that decided, I called my roommate from the dorm's asked him to pack a bag for me, and bring it to the hospital. I didn't know for how long I was going to be spending time in this room, but it was going to be as long as needed. I sat myself down in a chair, next to the bed, and just looked at him, no stared at him, almost in a trance, I saw nothing else around me, heard nothing else, just him. His eyes were closed and his hands lay at his side. He looked peaceful, I saw no pain, I took his hand into mine-it felt so cold -- not actually to physical touch, but the `feeling' of it was cold, and that in itself sent shivers down my own spine, and made me question, was this a futile effort? Was all that was left was a man being kept alive by a machine? Again that thought alone made me start to cry, it really did feel like torture, complete and utter torture. But no, I wasn't going to let me think differently, he was going to come around, I would have my father back in one piece, healthy and with me. But how long that hope would last, was unclear to me. As the days went by, and I sat there and stared and talked to a silent man, a man who just layed there with no movement, no sign of life other than the continuous beeping of a machine to say that the organs continued to function, I talked and talked to him. If he heard me I did not know, I don't think I really cared. And as the days turned into weeks, and I continually talked to him, there was no change. I asked the doctors over and over why they weren't doing the surgery, and the response was always the same, the blood thinner is working, it is slowly shrinking the blockage, and given that he is stable there is no reason to add more trauma to his heart if it's not needed. As much as I wasn't willing to accept it, I got opinion after opinion and the answer was always the same. It's safer not to do it. And what could I do but to just listen and accept it. I was asked over and over, why don't I just go home and take a break. And I always laughed and replied "if the only family you had was lying in a hospital bed would you go home?" And usually there was no response or a shaking of the head. I just continued to sit there, and talk to him, and think and contemplate life over and over again. And before I even realized it 2 months had gone by, and other than a few slight movements there had been no change. And I was finally asked the question that I didn't want to hear, or be asked. And I just said no, before they even finished the question. "I'm not pulling the plug, I don't care, if I sit here till next year." Although in reality, maybe I really was being irrational, after 2 months of nothing, no response, no improvement, was this really a futile effort on my part? Questions, Comments to Blondeblueeyes@gmail.com