Today made me believe in miracles

When my mother and I arrived at the hospital this morning, we already knew from my sister (who had spent the night at the hospital with Dad) that he had been moved to a new room - in the Cardiac Care Unit. I felt pretty optimistic at the time that it was a sign that they were getting things under control...until I saw my sister's face. I whisked her away to one of the umpteen lounges on the floor and she laid it all out on the table for me.

It was going to take a miracle for our father to survive.

Without going into a lot of detail - because this may get ugly before it's all said and done - there was such gross mishandling of Dad's case on the floor he'd previously been on that by the time they got him to Cardiac he was a mess. The staff in Cardiac was so upset about what had been done that they filed a grievance against the other floor. Yeah, it was that bad.

But you know how sometimes a person walks into your life and without you even knowing it saves your ass? Well, there was this great nurse assigned to Dad in Cardiac last night that spent a ton of one-on-one time with him getting everything straightened out - meds adjusted, doctors consulted, all that good stuff. I only got to talk to him for a brief second since his shift was ending, but I gave him a huge hug and thanked him for what he'd done for Dad. At the time, I felt like it probably wasn't enough to save his life, but that he had given enough of a damn to fix all the fuckups that the other jerks had done and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Thanks to the nurse's hard work, Dad's blood thinner level was in "normal" range at last, his heart rate had stabilized, and we were given the go-ahead for surgery. They wheeled him down to the OR, allowing my mom, sister and me to come along and sit with him in the pre-op area until they took him in. It was freezing cold in there, Dad was fading in and out of sleep (or maybe consciousness), and the three of us were lined up on rolling chairs watching the anesthetist's assistant work up Dad's IV's and stuff. The guy was funny as hell - a dry sense of humor, he kept me giggling the whole time. And when he turned his back to us to look at some charts, we noticed it...

His scrubs were hanging halfway down his ass, showing his boxers.

My sister started to giggle. My mother started to giggle. I was practically wetting my pants. And finally my mom looked over at me and said, "Well, at least his underwear is coordinated to his scrubs." We all just cracked up.

We all gave Dad a last squeeze and he was on his merry way. We expected him to be in the OR for at least three hours or longer, so we decided to run out and get some lunch since it was 1:30.

At 3:00, we arrived back in the waiting area to discover that the nurse had come looking for us.

They were done. And they had finished quickly, which could mean one of two things - either there was nothing that could be done for Dad, or they were able to fix it quickly. Finally, the surgeon came out.

"Your dad is a lucky man," he said, "We discovered that it was simply that his intestines had looped over each other, so we straightened them out and sewed him right back up."

No serious blockage.
No scar tissue.
No cancer.

I am telling you, he is one lucky guy. And he seems to be doing well - he'll be in ICU for a few days and then hopefully shipped back to the Cardiac unit where they took such great care of him. He's still having a few heart issues, but I think they're monitoring it very closely right now so I can sleep tonight knowing they're doing all they can do.

Tonight after Mom went to bed, my sister and I sat in our living room so exhausted that we could barely even see straight. We got to talking about Dad and all the crazy things he's done over the years and started laughing so hard that both of us were crying.

My dad is an incredible guy. And I'm not a super religious person, but I do believe that someone, or something, saved his life today. And that makes me doubly lucky.

Thanks to everyone for all the e-mails, phone calls, thoughts and prayers. I can't help but think that the outpouring of love my family has received did a lot for making this miracle happen.