Dark Clouds Above Me?

There must have been a few dark clouds above me as I spent the evening at the hospital emergency room with my dad. Let me explain...

At around midnight, I receive a call from my mom. She tells me that my dad isn't feeling well and wants to go to the emergency room. As you can imagine, I put on the first thing I can find and my wife and I head on over to my parents' house. We pick them up and head to the hospital.

On the way there, my mom tells me that my dad had been feeling discomfort all day long. He had wanted to go see his doctor, but it turns out the office is closed on Thursday. My dad decided to stick it out and see his doctor tomorrow rather than go to the hospital. Unfortunately, his body didn't quite agree - the discomfort got worse, he became short of breath, and he starting experiencing discomfort in his chest. He was also looking pale. The chest discomfort was the most worrisome thing as my dad has heart disease and went through a quadruple bypass some years ago. As you can imagine, we were all very worried.

We spent a total of 4 hours at the emergency room where they did the following:

• Blood pressue and heart rate monitoring
  
• ECG
  
• Chest x-ray
  
• Blood work
  

It turns out that there was fluid buildup in my dad's lungs which was causing him to be short of breath. In turn, this put stress on his heart as it struggled to pump more blood and oxygen through his system; hence the chest discomfort. The doctor at the emergency room proceeded to give my dad medication to start expelling water from his body. (And by expelling, I mean, he started to pee every 5-10 minutes.) This helped tremendously as after about an hour, his heart rate started to slow down and some color returned to his cheeks.

The emergency room staff got in contact with my dad's doctor once they had stabilized my dad's condition. They briefed him on what had happened and they decided to have my dad admitted to the hospital for continued treatment and observation.

We got home around 4am which means I had been up for almost 24 hours straight. I was very tired and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I woke up at 9am, sent off an email to let my manager and team know that I wasn't going into work today, and washed up. I then went to pick up my mom and we visited my dad.

Happily, I can report that my dad looked better this morning. He was awake and alert. The doctor had visited with him at 7am and now we're waiting for his cardiologist to swing by to check him out as well. I suspect he'll be in the hospital for at least another day or two, but hopefully all will be well and these dark clouds will break for some much needed sunshine.