Fighting

I’ve tried so many times in the last couple weeks to sit here and start my next blog. My fingers sit on the home row and my mind is churning with so many thoughts, but for some reason I can’t organize anything long enough to let the words flow from my brain to my fingers. This month and a half have flown by, yet at the same time it feels like one of the longest periods of my life. I guess what helped to get me started was yet another trip to the hospital on Monday night. I wanted to share more of my thoughts and frustrations, as I have had so much going through my mind and heart lately, but for now I will try to stick to the updates as I know many family and friends are wanting to hear how their Kenny is doing.

Over the weekend, my dad was feeling worse and worse, with episodes of vomiting, stomach pain, headaches, body aches, extremely high blood pressure, and complete exhaustion. On monday after dialysis, he slept the rest of the day, too sick to even attempt to get out of bed. In the evening, he had a low fever and chills that did not go away after two hours, and at that point we called the dialysis center to report his symptoms. We were immediately sent to the ER where they did blood work and scans and found that he had left upper lobe pneumonia, so they admitted him for treatment with IV antibiotics. Since then, things seem to just be hitting him one after the other. They found a bacteria growing in his intestines that is causing a lot of his gastrointestinal symptoms, and have started him on couple other medications to treat this. His blood pressure continues to be extremely high, and they are changing and adding different blood pressure meds. On Tuesday night, he had an episode where his left foot and hand went numb for a few minutes, and they ordered a head CT and MRI. The MRI came back showing some “abnormalities”, but they ruled out a lot of the major life threatening reasons and are now doing other testing to see what could be the cause. On top of it all, dad has been having issues with his swallowing over the last month which has been one of the largest factors contributing to his frustrations with his difficulty eating. Because of this, they did a swallow study. During the test, the liquid started to go into his lungs and caused him to start coughing, so they stopped the test and will likely repeat it sometime on Friday. Because they are concerned with his swallowing at this time, they gave him a feeding tube tonight that goes in his nose to his stomach as a temporary solution until they can get more information on why he is aspirating things into his lungs. It is very likely that this issue caused what they call aspiration pneumonia.

You are lucky...you just got the short version of what is going on. I know I make it sound so concise, but in reality it has been pure hell. I keep thinking to myself, “how much more can he possibly go through?!? This is not right.” My heart just breaks watching my dad have to suffer through all of this. How many times can a heart break before it is too late to glue the pieces back together? Because I think mine breaks at least 100 times a day. I must say, I am getting quite sick of hospitals. I have a feeling this isn’t a good thing considering I start my new job on Monday, but I really hate this place. As I was leaving the hospital tonight on my way home to some Chinese take out, I noticed that dad was calling me. As soon as I saw his name pop up, my first thought was “shit, what’s wrong now?” As I answered the phone, I knew by the silence that dad was in tears. He told me about needing a feeding tube, and as I turned my car around I talked to him and calmed him down and reassured him that he can do this. I guess I’m just a softie when it comes my daddy, but he ripped my heart out as I realized how much he needs me, and I raced back to that damn hospital so I could go be there to hold his hand.  After all was said and done tonight, he did a great job with yet again something completely awful and miserable. I lay here on this cozy (sarcastic) chair for the third night this week, my belly still full from the Chinese food smorgasbord Mike brought me and the travel mug of red wine mom and Keri snuck me to say “happy cinco de mayo” :)   I look over at dad, falling asleep beside me, and I still can’t believe that this is my dad. This man who took care of me, changed my diapers, bought me candy and movies when I was sick, who took me to baseball games, suffered endless times at Hershey Park enacting a dramatic death scene every time I came by in my flying spaceship shooting him with my machine gun, who came to every sporting event I played in and helped me practice my lay-ups regardless of how bad I sucked, who has supported me and encouraged me and helped to make me the person I am today. He is the most amazing dad and person that I know, and he has amazed me everyday that I see him battle what he has battled so far. It just sucks to see someone so amazing have to go through something like this. I know he is scared, I know we all are, but I know he is strong. He told me tonight, “I don’t know how much more I can take”. This seems to be a common phrase as he has had to endure so much, but I reminded him of how many times he has said this. And although what he has had to go through really, really sucks, he continues fighting through it all. I don’t want him to have to deal with anything else, and I pray that we start getting some positive news to make the fighting a little bit easier every day.