DAD

After a really long and scary drive over the rockies not long ago ( Vail pas had a "chains only" alert for commercial vehicles ) and since my trailer is perpetually overweight with no brakes it can get a little hectic. we make it home to my mom and dads house for the holidays where we will stay until just after xmas and we head south to Ft worth texas for round 4 of bookoo arenacross.

On the 2nd night of staying here my dad gets up at about 4:40 in the morning and i hear him walk into the bathroom and he is breathing very hard, i yell to him to see if he is allright and he doesnt answer ( he is hard of hearing and his hearing aids werent in ) a minute later he walks out and goes back to his bedroom and i yell again, this time louder...he pauses in his bedroom and walks back out, by this time im standing up in his path to see whats wrong and he is shivering like a leaf and can barely talk, he tells me to call 911.

If any of you have never experienced something like this, let me tell you it is not a good feeling, i thought for sure he was having a heart attack but as it turns out his gall bladder was about to burst and the bile that was leaking into his bloodstream caused an infection and put him into shock and a bad fever, at this point his temperature was about 104 degrees when EMT's arrived at 5 am and because he was shaking so bad telling me that he felt like he was freezing i had piled blankets on top of him and i later felt bad thinking i made his temperature worse by doing so.

Once they get him tot he hospital they pumped antibiotics into him and gave him something for pain, the fever broke for the most part and they admitted him, he has been there for several days now. yesterday they installed a drain in his side to reduce the fluids in his gall bladder and to help the antibiotics do their job of getting rid of the infection in his bloodstream, the surgeon is an asshole, he tried telling dad he could go back to work for two weeks while the fluid drained and then come back to the hospital for elective surgery to remove the gall bladder...its amazing to me that he never bothered to ask my dad what he does for a living.

Dad drives truck for Chrysler corporation, he is in the fleet and drives back and forth from southern indiana and northern michigan on various shipping assignments, he climbs in and out of the cab all day and what if he catches that drain on something ( my dad is 64 years old, has a bum leg and is overweight and a bit clumsy ) and this jackhole wants to send him back to work with a drain flowing bile directly out of his gall bladder into a bag. What if he catches it on something and rips a hole even bigger in his gall bladder and all that bile goes right into his body cavity while on the road? not to mention the drugs they have him on prohibit him from driving anything anyway...Dr's are dumbasses sometimes, no wonder i havent been to one in 6 years.

Dont get me wrong, im thankful they are there, but poor bedside manners contributed to this rant, so here it is!

At any rate, i just wanted to get it off my chest.

 Say a prayer for my dad would ya?, Holidays this year have had a rough start.

Thanks,

TOE