The Sunday before the ER trip was Mother's Day. I am afraid it was not much of one for my wife. I was barely able to walk I was in so much pain. I had gout. It was something I knew nothing about and had never had before, at least nothing like this. So it was decided that I should see a doctor on Monday.
That Monday was normal and my foot didn't even hurt much anymore. I seriously considered not seeing the doctor at all but my wife was pretty insistent, especially as she had made arrangements to work from home and watch the kids. So, I got an appointment for that afternoon.
I went to my appointment thinking they would tell me I have gout, give me a printout of things not to eat and drink and send me on my way. I sat on the exam room table and they took my blood pressure. That is the moment my life changed. The nurse took it twice then went to get another nurse to take it as well. I don't remember the exact number but it was high, very high. Heart attack, stroke, sudden death high and I was told do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to the ER at our local hospital, Mountainside.
So that is what I did. For some reason I was not sent by ambulance, I drove myself. Looking back at the ER's reaction to me, I probably should not have been driving. They wouldn't let me walk and even insisted on being next to me if I so much as stood up.
It was mid-afternoon when I went in to the ER. It was mid-evening when they decided I would need to be admitted. It was just a question of where I would go. They stopped the nitroglycerin drip for a while to see how my body would react. Depending on the reaction, I would either be sent to the Telemetry floor (for heart patients) or to the ICU. Finally, it was decided I would be sent to Telemetry and about 3am, I was crawling into a bed there and the nitro drip was restored.
During the course of those six days, I don't know how many times I had my vitals checked, had to pee in a bottle or had blood drawn. The only constants were the IVs and the heart monitor. I was blessed with tremendous care by everyone from doctors and nurses to volunteers, techs, chaplains and cleaning crews. I remember one nurse in particular who made it a goal to get me out of there and when on duty would not let anyone else take my pressure. She was adamant the numbers would go down and I can't explain how much she meant to me at that time.
Each day the doctors tried different drugs in various combinations, always optimistic that day would be the day I would be sent home but my blood pressure would not go down and my heart would not stop racing. There were even visible reactions from the techs who took my vitals when they saw the numbers.
In addition to the numerous tests run on my blood and urine, I was sent for an MRI and an MRA. I spent about an hour in one of those tubes you see on TV medical shows listening to bad radio and unable to move. After all the poking, prodding and tests (all of which came back clean), it was decided I had benign hypertension. It is just a way of saying there was no set cause other than genetics and lifestyle.
Through it all, I thought and I prayed. I thought and I prayed and more than once I cried. I was scared. I have never felt fear like that before. This was a different fear than any other. It was the fear of facing my mortality.
We all know we are going to die some day. We all have moments when we barely miss a car crash or other accident and think, I could have been killed. We think about it a little and then it is gone. This though, was the first time I realized my mortality in every fiber of my being. This was not knowing intellectually I was going to die but knowing it all the way to the very core of my person.
And six days is a long time to think with that hanging over your head hearing the calls of code blue down the hall or the woman screaming she was in pain and needed help. Six days was a long time to think about what I believed and how I was conducting my life. Six days was a long time to think about what kind of father, husband and person I was and was becoming. Six days was the time I needed to realize, God was kicking me in the butt and giving me a chance to straighten out my life.
For quite a while, my life had been in a fairly downward spiral. I did not adjust to suburban life well. I missed the lifestyle of the city. I was bitter about that. My kids were a lot of work, and being a stay at home dad, a lot of the time they drove me crazy. I had been sleep deprived for years and ate crap, just anything quick and nukeable would do. I was lethargic and while never diagnosed, doing a pretty good impression of a depressed person. Basically, I never wanted to do anything, go anywhere, was getting bitter, complaining and everything the kids did was driving me nuts.
I paid lip service to my faith at best and ignored it much of the time. I prayed each day for God's help and then promptly went about ignoring Him and wallowing in my own essentially, self-created misery. Fortunately, God did not give up on me. It is my belief that He decided that since I would not listen when He spoke quietly, He would speak loudly. So, He put me in the hospital.
The gout that was so bad I could hardly walk had never happened before that weekend and has not happened since but it may have saved my life. I thank God for that gout. It got me to the physician's assistant
who found the high blood pressure who sent me to the hospital where, eventually, they found the right combination of medicines and were able to release me.
But during those six days, I found something even more important. I found a renewed faith that allowed me
to see that the problems I thought I had, the problems that were turning me into a bitter, cranky person and poor example for my children, were not that big at all.
I had to make changes and through God's help, I was able to. The first part was my attitude needed to change. The second was my diet and exercise. If I wanted to be around to watch my children grow up, I needed to make those changes immediately and with help from family, friends and God, I have been able to.
It is still an ongoing process. I still get frustrated though nothing sticks and festers they way it used to. I would still rather live in the city than the suburbs and yes my kids, still drive me nuts sometimes but now, I try to never fail to see the blessings I have been given. My health has improved dramatically of the past year. I am no longer overweight. I exercise and eat much better. When I left the hospital I was on four different medications. I am now down to two and as I post this, it is the third day since the dosage on one of the two remaining has been lowered.
I realize now how I had let myself become something that I loath. It didn't happen overnight, in fact it happened so slowly I didn't even recognize it until I was forced to. It was, in the words of a Casting Crowns song, "a slow fade".
So this is one year since my life changed and this is the first of what I hope will be many posts about my life as a stay at home dad. If I had started this last year as I had originally thought I would, it would have had a much different feel.
I have written what is a particularly long introduction to this blog as a way of explaining where I am coming from as I write these posts. The experience in the hospital last year goes a long way toward shaping how I view the day to day dramas of parenting. Even the toughest day parenting is better than one in the hospital. Some days are better than others. Some days I am still tired and cranky but each day as I take my medications, I am reminded that every day is a gift and no one is guaranteed a tomorrow. I am also reminded of that time in hospital and the person I used to be. I don't want to forget that time, as scary as it was, because without it, who knows where I would be. I might not even be here at all.
Well done! If you ever need to just shoot the $hit sometime - give me a call. Been too long since we've seen each other!
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