In the hospital again.
Mar. 4th, 2004 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osarabaSo my father's in the hospital again. Last Wednesday morning, he went into the city in the morning with my mom to go to the eye doctor. They ate breakfast and split at 9am -- my mom to work, my father on the bus to the doctor's office on 79th and Lexington. He collapsed, unconscious, on the street at 80th and Lexington before ever arriving at the doctor's office; his heart stopped, he'd had an arrhythmia. Apparently there was a cop nearby and either saw him on the street or was directed to him -- she used a defibrillator to shock his heart into beating again. She called for an ambulance and they took him to Lennox Hill Hospital, 3 blocks away on 77th between Lexington and Park.
At 10am I got a call on my cell phone that woke me out of a doze really quickly when the caller introduced herself as Officer Someone-from-the-19th-Precinct and told me that my father had collapsed on the street at 80th and Lex, that he'd been brought to the hospital, and that he was alive. After sort of incoherently getting the number and location of the hospital, I called my mom immediately at work. No answer. I left a message on her voice mail and went to take a 5-second shower. I got dressed and left, but I wasn't going to get there for another hour and a half -- public transportation can only go so quickly, after all. Before I got into the subway, I called my mom again. Again, no answer. I left another message. I figured she either knew what was going on and went to the hospital in a tizzy, forgetting to call me, or that she was in a meeting.
Turned out she was in a meeting.
I got to the hospital at 11:45. The emergency room doctor took me aside and explained that he'd had a heart attack, the cause of which they weren't quite clear on as of yet, but that he was medically stable; the police officer had been so quick to find and resuscitate him that he'd only gone a few seconds without a heartbeat, and had absolutely no brain damage (oxygen to the brain had never been cut off). Boy, if my father was going to have an arrhythmia (from which most people die), he sure picked the right time and place to do it. Did I mention that Lennox Hill Hospital is among the top 50 in the country for cardiology?
Lucky him. In fact, I'm just so glad he collapsed there in the street because if he'd been at home and his heart stopped like that, he'd be dead now. I was sleeping all the way downstairs. I wouldn't even have come upstairs for another hour or two.
So. We come to the present, skipping over lots of adventures in him fighting the breathing tube stuck down his throat into his lungs to make sure he keeps breathing, causing them to restrain and finally sedate him for two days so he won't be able to pull the tube out, among other fun things. He's now awake and alert and thoroughly capable of trying to bribe the nurses to let him go home now rather than a week from Friday. He's scheduled to have heart bypass surgery this Friday (to clear the blockages they found while doing an angiogram) and then have a permanent pacemaker (he's hooked up to a temporary one for now) inserted on Monday. Then the rest of the week for recovery.
At 10am I got a call on my cell phone that woke me out of a doze really quickly when the caller introduced herself as Officer Someone-from-the-19th-Precinct and told me that my father had collapsed on the street at 80th and Lex, that he'd been brought to the hospital, and that he was alive. After sort of incoherently getting the number and location of the hospital, I called my mom immediately at work. No answer. I left a message on her voice mail and went to take a 5-second shower. I got dressed and left, but I wasn't going to get there for another hour and a half -- public transportation can only go so quickly, after all. Before I got into the subway, I called my mom again. Again, no answer. I left another message. I figured she either knew what was going on and went to the hospital in a tizzy, forgetting to call me, or that she was in a meeting.
Turned out she was in a meeting.
I got to the hospital at 11:45. The emergency room doctor took me aside and explained that he'd had a heart attack, the cause of which they weren't quite clear on as of yet, but that he was medically stable; the police officer had been so quick to find and resuscitate him that he'd only gone a few seconds without a heartbeat, and had absolutely no brain damage (oxygen to the brain had never been cut off). Boy, if my father was going to have an arrhythmia (from which most people die), he sure picked the right time and place to do it. Did I mention that Lennox Hill Hospital is among the top 50 in the country for cardiology?
Lucky him. In fact, I'm just so glad he collapsed there in the street because if he'd been at home and his heart stopped like that, he'd be dead now. I was sleeping all the way downstairs. I wouldn't even have come upstairs for another hour or two.
So. We come to the present, skipping over lots of adventures in him fighting the breathing tube stuck down his throat into his lungs to make sure he keeps breathing, causing them to restrain and finally sedate him for two days so he won't be able to pull the tube out, among other fun things. He's now awake and alert and thoroughly capable of trying to bribe the nurses to let him go home now rather than a week from Friday. He's scheduled to have heart bypass surgery this Friday (to clear the blockages they found while doing an angiogram) and then have a permanent pacemaker (he's hooked up to a temporary one for now) inserted on Monday. Then the rest of the week for recovery.
