Emancipation of A Drama Queen

My step-dad collapsed at home Monday morning. He thought he was having a stroke (he’s only 49) and yelled for my mother to call 911. He was rushed to a local hospital where they found the aneurysm and bleeding in his brain. He was immediately airlifted to St. Joseph’s hospital in Phoenix where they have the Barrow Neurological Institute.

He was then sedated heavily and put under in order to drill a hole in the top of his head to drain the blood. At this point everyone was waiting for him to get his CT scan so they could find the exact location of the aneurysm and how to proceed to fix it.

The aneurysm was situated right between his eyes and notin the carotid artery. This was a good thing and apparently common. At this point the surgeons were trying to figure out if they could fix this aneurysm with a less invasive procedure or if they needed to actually cut the top of the skull and go in that way.

Fortunately, the less invasive procedure was possible and worked. They basically put a coil in the artery which stops the bleed but still allows blood through the artery. This is how it was explained to me so I can’t explain it any more than that. They insert something into the main artery which is down in the groin and then they work up through the arterial system into his head to insert this coil. It’s called an angeogram (sp?) and this type of procedure is common with heart patients. My father had this done a couple of times. I’m sure you can Google it.

Anyway, now, it is a wait and see thing. The procedure went well and he is doing good. He will be in the ICU for a minimum of two weeks. After that, we don’t know. The nurses said they just have to take it day by day. The recovery is a long process.

Everyone is doing fairly well and we are all helping where we can. My step-sisters are doing ok and actually helping my mom out a lot. They have kids and jobs and a lot of responsibilities that they have to juggle in the midst of all of this. So, I’m here to pick up where ever I’m needed. My step-dad’s mother lives with him and my mom and she is taking this quite hard, as you can probably imagine.

Now, it’s time to shower and head over to see my mom and step-dad.

Thank you for all of your prayers and thoughts. He seems to be doing really well so everything looks good.

Surreal isn’t the right word. I’m not sure what word is fitting in this situation but it’s not surreal. I’m no wordsmith, of course, so coming up with the appropriate adjective is proving difficult.

Monday morning I received a call from my sister that I was not expecting. She informed me that my step-dad was in the hospital after collapsing at home and is being air lifted to a special neurological hosptial in Phoenix. At that point I can’t quite remember what else she said because I was crying my eyes out and sort of in disbelief.

To be honest, I was quite surprised at my own reaction. I love my step-dad. He has been in our family for over 10 years now. Even though I live far away and rarely get to talk to him, when I do see him, it’s like we saw each other every day. He has been great to my mother which is very important. He also has six kids, all around my sisters age and a tad younger. They adopted my mother as their own and have meshed with our family really well. I guess all of our dysfunctions pooled together to create one big happy and dysfunctional family. It’s pretty damn great. But, despite all of that, I didn’t expect to feel as heartbroken as I felt when my sister told me about him.

After I hung up with her I called my husband crying and told him I needed to go home. Again.

The boys and I hopped on a plane today and we are now back in Arizona for an undetermined amount of time. We went to the hosptial from the airport and I looked in on my step-dad feeling very apprehensive of what I was about to see. It’s hard to look at a strong, macho, active man in such a state of incapacitation with an astronomical number of tubes and catheters coming out of him. Ironically, however, my sister and I grew up seeing my father like that often. He was a sick man and had numerous major operations and varying health issues. Even though we were used to this kind of thing, to me, it was like a brand new experience. My father’s issues were all heart related. This time it was neurological and much more complicated.

My heart is breaking because I have to watch my mother go through this all over again. For over 15 years she was by my father’s side during his operations and health crisis’. Now, she is going through this all over again. No one wants to see her have to bury another husband.

My mother is the pillar of strength in these situations and is also a veteran. She will never let you see that she is upset or scared. And, as luck would have it, she just graduated from nursing school last Friday and is now a full-fledged RN. Funny how life works sometimes.

Even though my step-dad couldn’t hear me and had no idea I was in his room today, I told him that out of all of his wives (he was married twice before my mother came along - one just got out of jail after 8 years for robbing a bank in Mesa and the other is a complete whack job times 100) he picked the right wife to have an aneurism with. My mother laughed, and I know he would have too.

I will give details of the aneurysm and the procedure he went through later on and what his prognosis is. Right now I’m exhausted from a long day of travel and battleing two toddlers on an airplane alone. We only had one major meltdown on the plane, but it was enough for me to ask the flight attendant for a parachute. Ok, well, I wanted to ask her for one but when she came to ask if there was anything I needed (flight attendant code for “shut your fucking child up”) I just muttered “no thank you.”

Then we will cover the topic of automatic flushing toilets and running out of toilet paper. They both suck.

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Please, say a prayer, do a tribal healing dance, rub the belly of a Buddah, or just light a candle for my family. Whatever it is that you might do in a situation like this I would appreciate it.