Heart Attack

My mother came in while I was participating in my favorite Saturday sport, couching, and said, "Don't go to pieces on me. Get up, get some shoes on, and come with me right now." No conversation that starts out that way can possibly preface anything good. Today was no exception. Today I saw one of the scariest things I've ever experienced in my whole life. I watched my father have a heart attack.

Dad was out in the van. I limped around the house in a moment of complete brain failure after Mom told me that he was having chest pains, but I managed to find my purse, my crutch, and my flip flops, put Roux in her crate, and get to the vehicle, flailing madly all the way. Dad was in such terrible pain. Mom drove like mad to get to the hospital, faster than I have ever seen, but I don't know that I have ever felt that short trip to town to be longer. We ran red lights, stop signs, and wove in and out of traffic like we were in a high-speed chase, and finally we wound up at the ER.

The next hours passed as if we were encased in amber. Time disappeared, but some of the strangest details are stuck with me. I can remember the bizarrely cheerful pattern on the curtain in the cardiac unit of the ER. I can remember the red rhinestone pin the cardiologist wore on her white coat when she came in, and I remember the black leather jacket and motorcycle helmet the CCU nurse had on over his scrubs as the team began to trickle in from wherever they were before they were called in to attend to Dad's emergency. Everything in the ER, of course, was blue. That observation struck me again. Blue gloves, blue gown for Dad, blue scrubs on every nurse and tech except the doctor herself, the CCU folk, and the phlebotomist.

Once they took Dad up for a heart cath, one of my very best friends and her husband along with my pastor came to sit with us. I don't know what I would have done without them there to distract me. In that timeless little waiting room stuck off in a silent back hall, I think Mom and I would have gone crazy without something to do other than stare at the walls and think.

Hours passed, and when the word came that they had restored blood flow to Dad's heart and stopped his pain, relief came for us, too. We got to see him in CCU during visiting hours, and that awful grey pallor had gone. He seemed to be much more comfortable.

We'll go back to see him tomorrow morning for the first visitation. I'm about as tired as I've ever been, but I am so grateful that he's still with us. It's such a blessing.