Engleberts in Missouri [miz-er-ree]

Guess what?! They’ve sent my dad home from the rehab hospital today. That’s a week early! He is doing great - no walker, no oxygen, feeling strong. I don’t have any feedback on the feeling like a 20 year old yet.

I am back from Florida.

Actually I got home Saturday evening. To a clean house!! After the smelling salts brought me around, Steve took everyone out to dinner at Stout’s for pizza so I wouldn’t have to cook. Amber showed up just in time for a couple of hours of table-hogging and drinks. Then Jaymes, Vicki’s boyfriend, arrived so we stayed a little longer. Good thing we’re good tippers and it was a slow night or the waiter might have gotten a little po’d at the nearly 4 hours we monopolized the table. It was good to spend time just talking, laughing, telling jokes - you know, being a family. Don’t tell anyone but I missed them while I was gone.

My trip to Florida was … hmm… how can you describe so many days of hospital sitting? It was good to see my parents. It was good to see my brother and sister-in-law. It was good to see my aunts and my uncle. It was good to see my dad getting better.
When I arrived on Sunday night I was kinda freaked out. I thought my dad was doing better and there he was getting a blood transfusion! 2 bags! He didn’t seemed too freaked about it though and joked about getting his oil changed. The transfusion really perked him up quite a bit.

Late Thursday night (at 10 pm!) he was moved to a rehabilitation hospital. He’ll be there for about 2 weeks and then, hopefully, come home. After lying around the hospital for 17 days (not to mention the surgeries and complications), he needs to regain his strength.

Can you tell mom’s winning by a hair? And my parents wonder where we kids got our competitive natures.

Don’t know when I’ll be back again.

Heh. Actually, I should be back on Saturday because (drum roll please)…

There’s Good News on the Dad front. He was doing so much better yesterday. The chest tube is out and he is down to only the nose-plug-thingy (wouldn’t you think I would have looked up the actual name with all my googling?) and 2 liters of oxygen/minute. Xrays show no additional water in his lungs. That’s great news considering the doctor removed a 2 liter bottle of fluid he’d been storing in there over the past few days. AND he’s been moved to a regular room. Woo Hoo! Twelve days in ICU is way too many.

My mom thought maybe I’d cancel my plans to come down but no. I wouldn’t miss out on helping her bring my dad home for anything. Plus my ticket is non-refundable.

Not to mention what a waste it would be of the incredible amount of work and planning that has been accomplished in the past day and a half in order to cause the least amount of havoc while I’m gone.

I’ve cleaned everything. More than once unfortunately. I’ve laundered all the clothing. I’ve run all the errands and bought a ton of food. The bills are paid ahead. Plus, I’ve created this huge poster showing where and when everyone needs to be and I’ve bartered my soul babysitting a 3-yr-old in order to cover Violet’s half-day of school on Thursday.

I’m hoping all this prep will make things go smoothly at home. I am also hoping that things go smoothly with my trip. One leg of my flight has already been canceled and had to be re-booked. I better pack underwear in my carry-on. I’ve learned from my sister Lynn that the lack of clean underwear is very traumatic when they lose your luggage.

I’ll post when/if I can.

My dad had more fluid drawn off his left lung today. He says he’s feeling better after all that fluid from yesterday and today was removed. Still in the ICU though. And still on oxygen.

My mother is exhausted. 10 days now and no end in sight. Today she asked if I could come down. So, I have a ticket and will be flying down Sunday morning.

My brother John called this afternoon to confirm my trip details. He’ll be picking me up at the airport on Sunday. He had some wonderful news to share. He and Crystal have been trying to get preggo (iloverabbits iloverabbits) ever since they got married. It’s been a difficult and disappointing year and a half for them but now they are expecting a baby! It’s early days yet so I don’t know the exact due date but I should have a new niece or nephew in November.

I’m having trouble writing about anything except my dad. It’s not like there aren’t good things going on around here. Still, the only thing I can think about lately is my dad.

How is he this morning? Any improvement this afternoon? I obsessively wait for my mom’s phone call and when she doesn’t call as soon as I’d like I call the ICU desk to get an update on his condition. I’m constantly thinking about whether I should be flying down there right. this. minute.

I really don’t want to see my dad in the hospital. I’m sure he’s quite a sight right now. I try not to imagine all of the bandages on his head, tubes in his chest, machines and wires and gizmos attached to him. I want to see him and reassure myself that all this medical drama is not so bad but I’d rather fly down there when he gets home and is feeling better so we can talk and laugh and do stupid computer stuff.

I spend a lot of time on the internet looking up his symptoms and procedures. Then worrying about them obsessively and calling my sister Wanda who is doing the same thing. We share our internet finds and then discuss in detail exactly what they might mean. Today is Day 9 in the ICU and there are still problems. This morning the doctors removed 760 cc of fluid from his right lung. I googled all kinds of combinations of words regarding fluid and lungs, trying to figure out exactly how bad that is. Now I’m trying to convince myself that he doesn’t have congestive heart failure. Even though I know his heart is damaged from the 2 heart attacks.

It also doesn’t help that the last 2 episodes of House (my favorite show) have featured problems my dad has experienced. On Sunday night, the gal had a collapsed lung and nearly died. Last night, the girl’s blood oxygen levels dropped to 85 and everyone went into a controlled panic as she struggled to breathe. 85 - meh. That’s nothing. My dad’s dropped to 73 just the other day.

My mom has stopped telling me that he’s doing really good - I’m not sure if that’s in response to me or whether it’s because she’s realized that he’s really not doing good. Today my dad sent me a message to stop obsessing and to “get off the flipping internet!”

So in an effort to not write about my dad today, I scoured my brain for happy news. And realized that I never even mentioned Violet’s birthday the other day and didn’t share any of her pictures. So…Violet’s 10. Here’s her pictures. (how’s that for happy and chipper ?)