12:50 AM
Winding down on another long day. Spent the night on look out for ambulances as my dad is in another phase where he thinks he's having chest pains. He's 56 or 57 now and his life essentially ended in his 30s when he gave up drinking. It's a dumb sad story of how he got to the point where he is now. A lot of it is his own doing and frankly, the entire family is paying for the legacy he's left.

Every summer around this time he starts thinking he's having a heart attack. Anytime he's stressed or anytime something gets him down it's another trip to the emergency room with chest pains. I think our record was 10 times one summer. The scenario goes like this -- he gets angry or depressed about something -- takes a nitro. Another nitro doesn't work so he gets more upset. His other pills don't work and he gets on the phone. Usually it's in the afternoons or evenings when he knows his doctors aren't around. That results in him getting someone at the ER who doesn't remember him and if he does he uses the line "It's different this time" to get them to listen to him.

By then he's worked himself up into a frenzy. He honestly thinks he's having a heart attack and begins to show the signs that he knows of a heart attack. At this point you can describe ANY situation to him and he'll swear that's what's happening. He just wants to go to the hospital. I actually proved this once by describing labor pains and he swore like mad he was having them. Sad but true.

If I'm not downstairs he'll call the ER again at this point to get an ambulance here because "he doesn't want to be a bother" (like 5 people from the ER bursting through the front door and kicking open my office door isn't a bother), and to add to things he'll work himself up to the point where he'll fall out of his chair or take a header so when the workers get here he's "near death." They'll take him to the hospital. I'll follow in the car.

In either case we get to the ER and everyone knows him. He knows them, they know him, smiles all around. The first hour there's always a problem getting his blood out of him. I think he knows a trick to make taking blood especially hard. Sometimes they'll call in a specialist to get the blood. That usually adds an hour to it. But they can't do anything until they get the blood out of him.

After that they'll ask him what the pain is on a level of 1 to 10. He'll say 8 to 10 and they'll give him a drip of some sort (pretty sure it's nitro), that makes him happy. He'll relax, his readings will be normal, and after an hour or so they'll send him for an x-ray. X-rays come back negative and his vital signs will be normal on the EKG. Every now and then they find something worth admitting him for, but it's usually only overnight since it will clear itself up after a good night's sleep in the hospital bed.

First two to three hours in the ER are my shift. I bring a book. I usually can get halfway through a star trek or star wars novel in that time. My mom gets off of work and she takes over so I can go home after that. If they don't admit him he gets a soda from McDonalds on the way home and is fine.

Repeat a week later.

I used to do tae-bo. Actually got pretty good at working out with it every day. Gave it up last year because any time he heard me jumping around upstairs he'd get upset for some reason and have to go to the hospital. Three times in a week was enough to make me give up exercising.

Tonight he's worried because he wants the tube in his throat out. He had a tracheal tube put in last year because he has a sleep disorder that may stop his breathing at night while he sleeps. He had to do treatments at night and sleep with head gear on. When that proved to be too much of a bother he ignored everyone's advice and had them put a tracheal tube in. He thought this was going to solve all the problems and be easy to take care of. It wasn't. He surprised me by going nearly a year with it in without demanding it out. He doesn't need it at all but he had it put in so he wouldn't have to sleep with headgear on at night. So now he wants it out ...

He's all worried about that so he's getting in the mood again for some attention. He was having chest pains again tonight. ER procedures have changed, however, and he couldn't do the pattern he was used to. They wouldn't let him talk to a doctor at the ER unless he was going to come in. He swore he wasn't going to come in. So I find him in the kitchen. He's complaining that he's so weak and couldn't do the laundry. I ask him why he came up the big flight of stairs if he was so weak. He says because the coffee is up here (he has a coffee pot downstairs, but there's no making sense out of this by now).

An hour later I hear a crash. I thought it was one of the cats. Then the doorbell goes off and I say to myself "oh @#$@." Find him downstairs in his laz-e-boy. He says he fell down the stairs. He doesn't want to be a bother, he doesn't want to go to the hospital. He's fine, he's fine. I clean up what he knocked over and spend the rest of the night on the look out for ambulances.

Oh I love the summertime.

In other news, we're up to 5 readers of the blog. It's not Evil Jim, Summer, Katie, Antony & Brit. Whoo Hoo! Three more outed readers and we'll have more readers than there are known users of Microsoft "Bob."

I'm so going to bed now.

k9

1:44 AM
Quickly, up to 6. Evil Jim, Summer, Katie, Antony, Brit & Laura.

Love knowing my readers by name. :)

k9

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