The End of the Ordeal (?)

So, the last time I wrote anything about my dad was on Sunday the 8th. Crazy how a week flies by. The week went like this: Monday I'm up & into work by 7:30 & work solid through the day & leave at 3 to get more puzzles (dad blazed through the two I'd brought him before) & head to the hospital. There I find dad totally upset because one of the doctors has told him the pacemaker won't get put in until sometime next week & Dad (who is already stir crazy) is livid & raging about this - yelling that people are lying to him & that he's going to check himself out the next day if the ICD isn't getting implanted this week. To further help the anger, he'd been shuffled out of his room, the nurse just about screwed up his medications & all kinds of other stuff went wrong & he was totally fed up. Deep down he'd just gotten tired of being there & desperately wanted to go home & see mom & stuff (my brother observed that my dad has possibly never been away from home for >2 weeks - let alone stuck in a hospital for that time). So I spent the time trying to calm dad down & trying to get some kind of answers from the nurses/doctors. Lots of times I was tempted to let the frustration take over & start yelling at people, but I figured that nurses could be a vengeful lot & dad could become the human pincushion if we angered the staff too much. (apologies to all the hard working, dedicated, kind & compassionate nurses out there. Situations like this really show the contrast between people who care about the patients & those who are there for other reasons).

Oh, & some doofus came in that day telling dad that my dad was still stuck in hospital 'cause he didn't have enough faith. If he really believed in Jesus, Jesus would heal him 'cause Jesus doesn't want people sick.

It's lucky this guy was in before I came in. I would've torn out his throat or worse. It's one thing to have some theological debate about whether the 'faithful' get sick or not, but it's another thing to go into a hospital & sow despair to people who are already hanging on to hope by a slender thread. (though apparently this guy's friend was in to get a pacemaker installed & needed to come to calgary to be 'healed' 'cause there was too much unbelief in Acme where he lived.... nice, since it's OBVIOUSLY not a problem with your faith, you find someone else to blame for it)

At supper time, one of the doctors finally did come around & let Dad know that they had found him a place in the surgery schedule & he was booked in for surgery on Wednesday morning. So, in the end, things looked like they were going to turn out (Dad figures the yelling helped).

Tuesday went OK with another day of early to work, blaze through the day, leave at 3, head to the hospital, hang out, go home, try to get my head together & then sleep.

Wednesday it took an hour to get to work because of the snow, & then found they were taking dad in for surgery at 11, so left some early from work (noon) to go hang out with him while he recovered (had to lie still for 6 hours) & then left him in the evening to go to a decidedly jazz danceworks performance with my friend Sharon. (nice to have a break of 'normality' in the midst of the hospital routine)

Thursday, I get into work early, then get a call at 11AM from my dad who tells me that they're discharging him. The doctors had said on the Wednesday night, that they'd keep him until Friday AM for observation, but, the hospital needed beds & was kicking out everyone that could walk & so they told dad he'd have to gather his things & wait in the sun-room for someone to come get him. So I blaze out of work & get to the hospital to find dad hooked to an IV of antibiotics & he starts to complain of chest pains as a result of the antibiotics & we try to find a nurse & she doesn't arrive for another 10 minutes & by this time, dad's chest feels horrible & he's not sure what's going on or why it's hurting... After a much longer time, the doctors finally come, give him a check over & tell him that it's not his heart/a heart attack that's causing the pain - maybe it's indigestion/gas or something, maybe it's something else & so we pack up Dad's gear (& the plethora of puzzles I picked up for him) & head to my place where I try to organize ice packs & food for him. He spends most of the night in relative pain & sleeps on & off sitting on the couch. Ten or eleven PM rolls around & he's ready for bed & tries to lie down & pain goes shooting up from his heart to his neck & he decides he'll have to sleep sitting on the couch, reclined slightly back... I phone the roomies cell's asking them to be quiet when they come home & I camp out on the floor of the living room to listen to dad... to make sure he's still breathing, to listen if he needs anything.... at about 11:30 I guess the pain increases & dad feels like he's going to die. I by this time have collapsed on the floor & am dead asleep from exhaustion... so, Dad, being the person that he is, being the person that I'm like, decides not to 'inconvenience me' by waking me up & so just suffers through it until he falls back asleep. he tells me he 'wasn't sure he'd make it to morning', but figured he'd let me sleep....

The next day he feels slightly better & we take him home. The drive goes well. He's feeling a bit better, but still in pain when he breathes in... we stop in the pharmacy in town & pick up his bag of medications & bring him home to mom who is very glad to see him. We find that the blood pressure cuff that used to fit him well, now wraps around too far & the velcro won't line up to lock because his arms have shrunk. Friday night he's sleeping in a chair again because of the pain when he lies down.

Saturday I leave, heading for home so mom & dad can adjust to figuring things out with this new 'live' that they have. I half expect to get a desperate phone call on the cell for me to turn around to come pick up dad & whisk him back to the hospital, but the phone call doesn't come. Sunday morning I phone home & dad's had a fantastic night's sleep & can nearly lie fully flat & his chest only hurts a little bit when he breathes his deepest... & so yeah, hearing that was such a relief, such a load off my shoulders.

...I wanted to bring him home triumphantly, to escort him back from his battles like the victorious warrior that had overcome the challenges. I was looking for my 'happy ending' to this ordeal, but instead I get the trepidatious, precarious half victory of bringing dad home still hurting, still vulnerable, with a million changes to deal with & a life (and perhaps a body) to rebuild with new constraints & challenges.

But perhaps the pain is good. Dad has to take it easy for 6 weeks to let the leads of the ICD set/heal properly. If there was no pain, if there was no obvious limitation, it would be easy to ignore the 6 week waiting period, easy to rush back into the busy-ness of it all & end up pushing himself & maybe damaging himself worse or undoing what was done in the hospital.

Or at least this is the 'silver lining' I look for - some reason to explain a 'higher purpose' for the pain, for the lack of closure... It seems like with some of the dark times that we don't overcome them in the sense that we completely wipe out all memory & trace of the pain, but instead we overcome by going through, by enduring, the pain and the pain & it's mark/effect are not forgotten, but we find ourselves living in a life that is so much greater, more beautiful, than the dark moments that it makes us realize that the pain was worth it - like this idea of how the joy of a child eclipses the pain of childbirth (though I've never had to go through childbirth (thankfully) & so I wouldn't know).

....our pastor visited dad in the hospital & read him a passage out of Hebrews 12 about Jesus enduring the cross. at the time I was angry because I thought that wouldn't help, but I heard my dad saying how much he appreciated that & how he was meditating on that passage for quite a while afterwards....

...and yeah, I start to wonder if whether or not we meet Jesus most plainly in the moments where we share in "the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death".... where we weep with him in Gethsemane after all our friends have fallen asleep instead of praying with us, watching with us.... where we endure our cross of suffering and/or shame waiting for the resurrections that (in theory) lie before us....