Life in the ER and a completely different reason it rocks to live in an apartment

On Sunday I spent a few hours shopping with my sister. When I got home Adam ran next door to the grocery store to pick up a few things to make dinner. Right after he got home our new neighbor came up and invited us to her house for tacos. Rock on. All of our building regulars were there, as well as all of our kids and we ate tacos and hung out and had fun for about an hour and a half. That's when Adam left with our 2 kids to give them baths and put them in bed. He had been gone for a few minutes when he came back downstairs and told me my sis and BIL had been trying to reach us for an hour because my dad had been taken by ambulance to the hospital, my hospital I work at.

I ran out and headed over there, calling my BIL on the way. Apparently my dad had passed out at home. Just before that though, he managed to hit his Lifeline button to have 911 dispatched.

He got there around 7pm and I got there at 8:30. He was awake but in a lot of pain. He had bouts of diarrhea there in the ER so bad that even the nurses were gagging. It may be terrible and gross but you have to give yourself a high-five if you've got it bad enough to gag a nurse, that's my opinion anyway.

So after a couple hours they did some xrays and a CT scan and the ER doc had a strong suspicion it was colitis, or a blockage of the colon. He said the strong odor was what they call "dead bowel". Ack. He was in a lot of pain and there was talk that they were going to have to call in the surgical team. Once the CT results came back and the surgical doc was called, they confirmed their diagnosis but decided to treat him with anti-biotics to avoid surgery. They want his colon to clear itself, which it seems to be doing. At 2:30am they finally secured a room for him in the ICU and we finally left the place at 3:30am.

My BIL had taken my sister's car home with him so I drove my sister back to our apartment and we got there around 4am. I knew the kids would be up around 6 and our neighbor was bringing her 2 sons at 7:30 to hang at our house until the bus comes. I had intentions of just staying up but went to bed a little after 5, getting up at 7:15.

After all the kids were on the bus my awesome neighbor downstairs took Blake for the day so my sister and I could concentrate on our dad. We went out for breakfast and headed back to the hospital.

My dad arrived at the ER without his bottom dentures. He said he had thrown up in a trashcan next to his chair at his house so my sister and I knew we had a nasty task ahead of us. This afternoon we went to dad's apartment to make sure it was all locked up and to try to find his dentures and glasses. I was really dreading going over there, fearing what we would find. I grabbed a handful of rubber gloves from my dad's room in the ICU before we left.

My sister was in front of me unlocking the door. I lagged behind, waiting for the horrible smells to hit my nose once the door was opened. She opened the door and said, "Well, it doesn't smell." Good! We walked in and you would have never known my dad had been through hell that afternoon and early evening. His apartment was practically spotless. Seriously. Imagine yourself sitting at home when suddenly you get stricken with severe stomach pains, you get diarrhea, throw up and just before you pass out you call for help. The next thing you know you're outside on a stretcher with paramedics and firemen all around and you're asking for the trashcan you knew you threw up in before. Now imagine what your house would look and smell like the next day. Grody, right? Not my dad. His house was cleaner than mine.

Fortunately or unfortunately for us the trashcan was no where to be found. After a lot of phone calls we decided it had been chucked somewhere and dad was just going to have to be without half of his teeth for a while. We went back up to the hospital to give him the glasses, which we did find, today's newspaper and to deliver the bad news about his choppers. He was like, "Well, I was due for new ones anyway."

We came back to my house since Emily had just gotten out of school and my sister started going through dad's big bag o' meds. There in the bag was the lost dentures. Hip-hip-hooray! She took them up to him tonight.

So the awesome neighbor who kept Blake today agreed tonight to keep the kids on Wednesday night because I have to work 3rd shift. I can't tell you how great it feels to have people you haven't known for very long step up for you and help you out. Adam is still working out of town and I was starting to feel a bit stressed about what I was going to do. I have a strong feeling a couple other neighbors would have volunteered as well, had they been asked first. Adam and I are indebted to these people forever. I think this is what they meant by, "It takes a village..."

Tomorrow I have to call my manager about my schedule. Since my dad was the only sitter I had to watch the kids when I was scheduled to work on first shift, I'm going to have to take myself off the availability for first shift. At least for a couple weeks until Adam gets laid off for the winter. I don't like to do it this way but I really have no other choice and it's only for a couple of weeks. Then they can schedule me for just about anything, but right now I need to concentrate on my family. Adam and I have already had a discussion about child care next year when he goes back to work. We know that we are going to have to find someone else because we knew, even before this, that my dad was getting too tired to deal with the kids, even for a few hours. We're going to retire him and let him just be "Papa" for a while, coming to visit every few days just for a little while.

As for my dad, they're keeping him tonight too and will likely let him go home sometime tomorrow, if everything continues to look good. I'm pleased as punch about that.