The Week Started Off Scary But Ended With Good News And A Laugh

I’ve had one of those weeks … but I’ll tell you there is a happy ending — and not that kind of happy ending — so it’s all good.

Last Sunday we went to bed around 11PM. Carlos sleeps like a log — he slept through Hurricane Katrina … seriously — and I wake up at the sound of the heater coming on. So, around 1AM I hear a beep in the distance and wonder what it is … the answering machine.

But I didn’t hear the phone. I tumble from bed and walk into the office and there are two messages ... the first from an unknown number. I press play …

“Bob. It’s Dad. I’m in the hospital. Give me a call.”

WTF? Message 2:

“Bob, it’s Dave [my brother]. Dad just called. He’s in the hospital ER in Bellingham and trying to get hold of you.”

I call the hospital and they patch me through to the ER and they tell me my Dad has been transferred to a room and I need to call the front desk. Click.

WTF. I call; I get through to my Dad. He sounds bad; he was eating dinner and reached for a napkin and his hand didn’t work; he couldn’t control the movement in his left arm. So, he did what most people do, he got online and checked his symptoms, and the word ‘stroke’ came up. And that’s when he called 911 and was taken to the hospital.

He was in the hospital for about three days being tested and EKG’d and CT Scanned and MRI'd and it was discovered that he had the most minor kind of stroke due to Atrial fibrillation, or AFib.

All of his tests came back good, and he has regained nearly all the use of his hand and arm again — after just a couple of days — but now he’s being monitored for the AFib and will be checked out again in a month.

He has a heart monitor he wears for the month that is linked to the hospital and 911 so if anything happens while he’s being tested he can get help right away.

Dad’s a computer guy so I mentioned that he’s been synced with the hospital and when he showers and needs to remove the monitor, afterwards he needs to reboot. Dad laughed at that comparison, which means he’s so much better already.

He also called Donald [t]Rump as a**hole so I know he’s better.

I’ve been on the phone with him all week — he told me not to come out, though even though he’s better I think I should have gone but … hindsight — and last night he told me, and this is his sense of humor, that when he dies he wants to make sure I put a recent picture of him in the paper. He said he saw an obituary of  a man in his late 80s, and the picture used was one in which the man was wearing a WWII uniform!

We laughed and chatted and then I hung up, only to have Carlos tell me a few minutes later — and he hadn’t know what my Dad had said about ‘when I die’ — that when he dies he wants Bach played at his memorial.

I told him I’d already planned on playing “It’s Raining Men.”

Like I said, it was a happy ending to a weird week, so ya’ll go out and have a faboosh weekend.