My father had open heart surgery Wednesday. He was in bypass for way too long (350 minutes compared to around 50 minutes - the doctor's personal record). They had a lot of problems with bleeding and starting his heart and chipping away calcium from his valves which normally takes 5 minutes but took the surgeon and hour and a half.

He's been on full life support since surgery. His lungs are filling up and he's on kidney dialysis. He can't keep his blood pressure up without tons of blood pressure medications. He has tons of medications going in to him and blood platelets but nothing is coming out. Every time they take fluid away from his body, his blood pressure drops and that kidney dialysis takes fluid away from his body so they can't set that up high enough to where he needs it.

There's so many more tragic things going on with him too, I just don't feel like going through the effort it takes to type it all out. The latest is that there's blood in his stool. They can check his upper part of the body for internal bleeding but not the bottom part as he's too unstable. If it's a upper problem, they can clamp it. If it's lower, he's too critical to have that fixed.

He's at risk of losing his limbs due to the blood pressure medications he's on as it clamps down on his vessels in his extremities to keep his blood pressure good in his core and head. He may have had a bunch of strokes but we won't know about that unless he's awake.

I got some Xanax yesterday and that's helping tremendously.

Things are bad. Really bad. We were told that he needed to make a turn around within 24 hours... about 48 hours ago, or his internal organs start to die or something.

 

Jenna, you and your family will be in my prayers.

I hope that your dad makes a turn around right now.

Keep us posted.

Zindy

 

My hopes and prayers are with you and yours.

 

you and your fam will be in my prayers as well..

 

I wish you and your family all the best. Sounds like things are really bad, but have faith that the doctors and nurses will do all that they can to help him.

Let us know if we can do anything...

 

Jenna.........what is your fathers name..........

 

X2 Jenna, hang in there and you and your family will be in our prayers.

 

Jenna

Your father, and your family are in our prayers!

best of luck

josh

 

jenna sorry to hear about this. i wish you and you dad a full recovery. you also need to prepair for the worst. if you do that and you comes out fine. then you know you over prepaired. but if you do prepair and the worse happens. then it will still hit you hard as it is your dad. but you able to deal with it a bit better. no one wants to lose one of thier parents. but it is a fact that one day they will go off to a better place. if not you need to find out what they did...lol

one of my high school friends his dad was about an hour away from them pulling the plug on life support after he had been on it for 1 week and a half. they waited for his 2 sisters and brother to say good bye. but funny thing is. he made a full recovery. well not fully. he has to walk with a cane. but still.

keep hope jenna. my paryers are with you family

 

i am sorry to hear, i wish the best of luck to your family

 

wishing the best for you and your family. take care and hang in there.

 

Hang in there Jenna. Your family is in our prayers. I hope things start looking up for you and your family.

 

Thoughts are with ya....

 

Hey, I don't know you; but stories like this hit home hard, your family will be in my prayers.

 

Jenna i will keep your family in my thoughts with my own(who are back in england). My brother was just told today that the next 24-48 hours are also critical for my mom(lung cancer / intensive care / pneumonia). I feel for you.

Keep thinking good things as long as you can(its hard i know)

 

Thoughts and prayer are with you. I know how hard it is to have a parent in that situation, you feel helpless and just want everything to turn out. Hope all turns out for the best.

 

my thoughts are with you. Right now I'm dealing with a ex-sister in law who is full of cancer. It can be hard but, keep positive

 

Thank you everybody.

I have posted this on another message board with ladies I've been friends with for 5+ years and it's just easier to copy and paste it than to type it all over again.

***

It's over. It was to the point there was nothing they could do. Tthings were just too hopeless so I made that difficult decision.

They didn't think he'd last too long after pulling life support so we waited outside his door and rushed in. I held my father as he died. He never even tried to take a breath. Basically, life support was pulled at 8:33 our time and he passed at 8:34.

I'm amazingly calm. I of course didn't do too well holding my father but I've been okay. I think this is a combination of already gearing up for this the past day or two, the Xanax and Zoloft. I feel bad for not being uncontrollably sad right now as I've been a lot the past few days. I don't know what's doing with that but whatever. I might keep on that Xanax for a while yet though.

My husband have just been sitting here on the couch (we're home now), talking about how great of a man he was and through all of that, I'm still calm.

Anyhow, that's about it. We have tonight on the route to discuss how we're going to tell the boys tomorrow. I'm also going to quit my route here in the next couple days since we're going to probably be putting some of his ashes next to his parents down in Oregon and I'm just simply not up to training anybody to cover the route. And my father has a bit of money where we'll be fine.

I've got some busy days ahead of me. He did do an amazing job getting his affairs in order though. But we also now need to learn his business and all that too.

Thanks for all the support and keeping me company during all those days in the hospital. It was great to have a computer... one can only take relatives for so long, lol.

Jenna

 

I am so sorry for your loss. If you need anything at all please let me know. In the few times that I met your father I thought he was a wonderful man, and he will be missed. You are in my prayers and I love you lots!

 

chin up jenna. look at it this way. tonight you gained him as your guardian angel. i know you would rather have him around.

leave the last few days behind you and always remember the good times. only thing you can do.

if you need anything let me know