My Dad is in the Hospital

My dad went in the hospital last Friday. He's had health problems and things haven't been good the last few weeks; diarrhea, weakness, and infection in his left leg. He's been huffing and puffing, can't breath well, and passed out in the kitchen Friday afternoon while I was still at work. An ambulance came and took him down to Dover, where they determined he had an irregular heartbeat (why he passed out), COPD ( the huffing), and that swollen leg needed antibiotics.

            Being self-centered the whole thing made me feel guilty, as it should. I'd been looking at my dad a lot lately, and noticing the muscle mass he's lost in his arms, the way one leg or the other is swollen, the look in his eyes. I had to bring up the diarrhea when he was talking to the doctor; he doesn't want to talk about his accidents. Or the fact that we've had to help him stand, to get up from the toilet. I didn't call, but that had me worried all yesterday, the thought that he'd be stuck in the bathroom all day.

            But when I got home, mom and dad weren't there, the kitchen table was pulled out from against the wall, and there was a little blood on the floor. Dad had fainted, had hit his arm and bled a little (he's on coumadin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin), a blood thinner), and that was where he was when the paramedics came for him. Mom didn't have time for a note, I finally got a hold of her on her cell phone and learned all this.

            I drove down with that blankness that isn't calm, with jags of emotion. Didn't get in an accident or lose it, but it was bad. Wandered through that maze of a hospital complex until I found the ER. I just wandered around and I was about to ask after my dad, Thomas Cleaver, when I saw my Mom in one of the rooms, with my Dad. He wasn't comfortable, but he wasn't dead. That's a big deal. It didn't register, that possibility, until just that moment.