A Dark Night, and Dawn

Last night: after two days without sleep, my mom finally passed out. I did not. I couldn't drink myself to sleep because, if the hospital called, I would need to lucid. I didn't know if my father would be with us when we woke up.


It was a long, dark night.

No one called with news of either kind during the night, so... it was a no-news-is-no-news situation. We went to the hospital, thinking it would be more of the same.

My father was awake.

He's groggy and cannot speak. But he moves and can smile. He knows what you're saying to him, and gave a weak thumbs-up when he heard he would be able to golf again.

Daina was pleasantly surprised. She didn't say it in so many words, but I could tell they didn't expect for this to be the outcome.

Here's what happened:

On Monday, it was bad news of course... having a minor stroke is like getting shot with a minor gun. (Or an "insignificant bullet," as Werner Herzog would say). It's not exactly a paper cut. But he could talk on the phone, and lie comfortably in bed.

Thus, they weren't watching him every second on Monday night. So when he had trouble breathing, it was several minutes before a nurse noticed. It was no one's fault, just some bad luck. He was a victim of his own relatively good health. When he wasn't breathing, the oxygen was cut off from his brain. Luckily, it wasn't long enough to kill him, just knock him out.

This morning: we met with Dr. Gorman. The tests for which we'd been waiting came back.

He had a stroke in the right side of his brain stem. The flow of blood to the brain had been blocked by an obstruction. But the test didn't show anything here - whatever had caused the stroke has since moved on. There was no bleeding in his brain. The stroke affected the cerebellum, which controls the senses. From what we can tell, nothing that controls basic motor functions was damaged.

He can breathe on his own, but is still aided by the tubes. They don't want to rush it. It could come out today, or tomorrow. They still want him to get a lot of rest, hence my being home at the moment. We can only visit for limited periods.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and support. My dad could have gone either way last night. It was 50/50. We flipped a coin... and we came up heads. I'd like to think he was aided by the good thoughts that came his way.