Black Friday

Indeed. Yesterday was a big ol' Black Friday to be sure. While many people willingly deprived themselves of sleep in search of a phenomenal bargain, I spent a restful morning in bed with my feet not hitting the floor until sometime shortly after 8:00. Little did I know that while I was enjoying the warmth of my bed and soaking in the soft, peaceful exhalations of Baby Miss's breathing, serious commotion was unfolding in my childhood home. My Dad awoke not feeling well...head pounding, nauseous, hot all over. Being diabetic he chalked it up to low blood sugar and asked my Mom for a glass of juice. It quickly became evident that low blood sugar was not the problem as my Dad sat on the bathroom floor not able to get up without help. With the help of my brother, my Mom got my Dad out to the car where he crawled into the backseat and off they headed to the ER. A CT scan at the hospital showed bleeding in his brain that had caused a stroke and immediate plans were made for my Dad to be air-lifted to '0ne of the nation's leading academic medical centers.' All of this occuring before I'd barely begun my day. The call came from my brother at 9:13 and I missed it. So he called J's phone and had to leave a voicemail there too. Fortunately, within 10 minutes of my brother's call, J noticed that he had a new voicemail and listened to the brief message from my brother mentioning my Dad and an emergency. J immediately called my brother back while I stood at his side in a panic, catching only bits and pieces of my brother's side of the conversation but enough to know that it wasn't good. J got off the phone, relayed the pertinent info and through a blur of tears I ran upstairs and did the first thing that came to mind, called one of the pastors at our church and asked for prayer. While I was doing this, J was making arrangements with our friends to pick up the Big Girls so that we could meet my parents at the hospital that my Dad was being air-lifted to. We ended up arriving at the ER around noon and about the same time as they did. Once they had my Dad admitted and set up in the ER a social worker came out to the waiting room and took us back. I thought I was prepared for what I might see...but I wasn't. Physically my Dad appeared fine, other than that he wouldn't open his eyes but he was coherent and talking to the doctors and nurses. It was seeing him on a gurney, in a hospital gown, hooked up to monitoring equipment that was my undoing. After a few hours in the ER we were joined by my siblings and sister-in-law and it was determined from various tests that my Dad has a loss of peripheral vision in his left eye and that his hand, arm and leg on the left side are weaker. Eventually he was transferred up to the NICU (Neurology Intensive Care Unit) where he was hooked up to what seemed like even more equipment. We spent a couple of hours with him in the NICU before heading back toward home to retrieve the Girls as it was nearing their bedtime.