Letters to Angels: In my Father's Presence

....kind of tired & worn today... but am sort of OK. It's been a long week & it'll be another long one. My dad is in hospital for the rest of the week - they're going to put an ICD in him (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator ). It's a fancy pacemaker that speeds up your heart if it's too slow (though we're not worried about that) & tries to stop it when the heart rate goes too fast. If he gets his irregular heartbeat where the ventricles (bottom bit of the heart - the main pumping area that pumps blood to the rest of the body) pump too fast & are all irregular (which is bad 'cause the atria of the heart are supposed to fill the ventricles with blood & then the ventricles pump blood to the rest of the body - if the ventricles pump too fast, then the heart chamber doesn't get filled with oxygenated blood & soon the ventricles are pumping nothing & no oxygen gets to the brain & you die) - anyhow, if his heartbeat is irregular, this ICD thing is supposed to stop it by 1) pacing the heart quicker than the rapid heartbeat - this is supposed to sort of knock the heart off balance & help it reset itself into a regular rhythm, or 2) if that doesn't work it tries doing little shocks to your heart (feels like someone hitting your chest) to try to reset the heart rhythm & 3) if that all fails & you go into cardiac arrest, are about to pass out & die, it full on shocks you like the defibrillators you see on TV (the paddles) - I guess this feels like someone kicks you in the chest..... & apparently if they don't calibrate it right, you can occasionally get shocked by accident.

...so yeah, lots of scary stuff there - Dad's got 3 main problems: 1) coronary artery disease (i.e. blockages in his arteries) - doctor said we all get that sooner or later - they fixed some blockages in his heart with the angioplasties, but the reality is that if you have blockages in your heart you likely have blockages elsewhere in the body... so you have to worry about stuff getting clogged off or if one of the blockages breaks loose it can get caught in the arteries & wedge itself in there & stop blood flow & also kill you. They're treating this with drugs, 2) he's got the irregular heartbeat that they're treating with the ICD & 3) he has a weak heart - the ventricles appear to be large, damaged & weakened & they're not pumping as well as they should - again, they're hoping to treat this with drugs to try to make the heart a) not work as hard & b) strengthen it & hope it heals itself a bit....

So he has more tests early this week (one where they insert a radioactive tracer into some of his blood & then inject it back into him & watch it travel around his body so they can see how his heart is pumping stuff through) & other stuff... ICD is hopefully put in on Thursday & Dad's hoping to go home on Friday or Saturday. Hopefully it works 'cause he's going crazy in the hospital. He was pretty bummed yesterday thinking that he'd never get out, but the doctor talked with him quite a bit yesterday & so he feels better.

The doctors were also talking that he couldn't drive for 6 months after getting the ICD - he felt that was a 'death sentence' 'cause it would mean he's stuck at home & has no freedom even to go visit people in town (the challenges of being on an acreage) But yeah, I guess there is some debate about that now amongst the doctors, so we'll see....

Anyhow, a bit exhausted. It's been a bit of a weight to carry & I'm feeling it a bit tonight. It's been wonderful to hang out with my dad & to connect with him & to be his little bit of sanity in the day.... it's been some decent times bonding with him. I've been having a hard time finding stuff to talk about with him (you just run out of things to say after hours of looking at each other) & so I've brought in printouts of his favorite political blogs & brought in some puzzles that fit on his food table thing so he can sit at his bed & work on them. We've been working on a couple of them together & so it's been nice to just be quite & tag team the puzzle & then if we think of something to say we pipe up & say it - but it removes the pressure from both of us of having to be interesting all the time.... ('cause I know I'm not interesting all the time).

have thought about calling you sometimes. It's nice to have a 'safety net' out there - people that will catch you a bit when you collapse.... a person maybe doesn't use the safety net as much as they should, but it sure does give the freedom to know you can push it & the net is still there to catch you a bit. It's just been a bit tiring & hard - wonderful in many ways, too, but yeah, I'm a bit worn. Friendship stuff has been a bit wonky.... I'm doing the silly things of pressuring relationships - the stuff with dad has been wonky in that I'm looking at my life now & 1) realizing that dad would love to see us boys married & having kids & it's something that I'd like for him to see/be there for part of my life & I realize the clock is ticking on that, and 2) I'm afraid that I'll have the heart stuff that dad has & I'm hit with the reality that my life may be shorter than expected & so I'm worried about timing & if I have enough time on planet to get married/raise kids... and so yeah, I'm now looking at my female friends more closely & seeing which ones are 'suitable candidates' to get married - sad, eh? I've dropped from worrying about wanting to fall in love to just wanting to find someone so I can start the baby-making process before I die... this wasn't exactly what I had in mind....

...came out of the hospital tonight thinking about how I've been in "the presence of my father" & how I know I love him & figure he loves me & how that feels good & centering & that the rest of the stuff doesn't matter so much. & thought about how that preachers often refer to the difference with Jesus being that he was always "in the presence of His Father" and knew that He was perfectly loved by God & this is what freed him from so much of the shackles we humans tend to wear for the sake of earning/finding love instead of receiving what is freely given from God.... and so yeah, I feel good in this odd sense of just recognizing that my relationship with my dad is good & it's such a privilege to be able to 'be there' for him at least a little bit & to show him love....