Re: A sad night.
- From: Steve Terry <paul_terry@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:21:47 -0700 (PDT)
On Jun 25, 1:31 am, The Lord of Eltingville
<tthomas@[REMOVE_TO_REPLY]ogre.net> wrote:
As some of you may/may not have known, my father's been having some
problems lately and I had to bring him to the hospital early Saturday
morning after he called to tell me that he wasn't able to breathe when
laying down. The past few days have been a roller coaster, to say the
least.
I visited him on Sunday morning and he remarked that he was feeling much
better--he certainly sounded better too. We talked for a few hours and
I told him I had to leave to do some errands, but I'd pop in later on to
say goodnight.
It couldn't have been more than a minute or two after I left that his
heart rate shot up to 180+ bpm, his blood pressure dropped, and he
stopped breathing. It took the code team ~5 minutes to revive him with
a defibrillator, but they brought him back. Unfortunately, they also
had to put him in a medically induced coma to make sure his heart
remained stable.
Shortly after I left the ICU Sunday night, I got a call from the ICU
nurse asking me to come back as he'd fought his way out of the coma and
had somehow disconnected the breathing tube from the machine not once,
but twice--all with his one good hand in a restraint. When they removed
the breathing tube, he announced that whoever invented it ought to be
strapped down and have one shoved down his throat for a while to see how
he likes it. Then he told one of the nurses to go get him a Popsicle.
He's been doing consistently better since. I visited with him for a few
hours this morning and we had an unusually long chat about a lot of
things. When I went back later in the afternoon, he was in excellent
spirits and again, we did a lot of chatting before I had to excuse
myself for a meeting with someone this evening. I told him to have a
good night and left.
A little over two hours ago, our doctor (he and I have the same one)
called me to tell me that he had just passed away in his sleep.
Apparently his heart started acting up again and he didn't have time to
even wake up--which, as he'd told me many times, was exactly how he
wanted to go.
It's a cruel bit of irony that someone with such a good heart also had a
weak one.
So here I sit at 44 years old, an orphan. It's a strange feeling. I'm
not looking forward to the reality of it all setting in, but at least I
can take a lot of comfort in knowing he lived and died exactly as he
wanted. We should all be so lucky.
My one true hero's gone. I know that my size 14 feet will never come
close to filling his size 10 shoes. I can't think of anyone that I've
ever been prouder of.
If your parents are still alive, make the time to go give them a hug
tomorrow (or at least a phone call). It will be worth it.
I know it's late, but I have some phone calls to make and it's tie for
me to stop rambling.
Good night all, and remember what I said about giving your parents a hug.
~Ted
Sorry to hear the news, Ted. My thoughts are with you.
.
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