We got a call at 8:00 am today saying the ambulance was taking Dad to the hospital. He was fine this morning, had a shower and was at breakfast when he became non-responsive. Jan arrived first at the hospital, then Ted, then myself.
His blood pressure was insanely high, he didn't know who was in the room and did not respond to Jan and Ted calling his name. He was flailing a bit, grasping at his face. When the nurse tried to put a breathing tube down his nose, they apparently cut him or something and he began to bleed profusely. They have him on blood thinners, so he is very prone to bleed. Apparently they had him lying down while the bleeding was going on and the blood ran down into his lungs and stomach. As they were trying to stabilize him, they had to put a tube down into his lungs to remove the blood. I am told this very much increases his odds of getting pneumonia. When moving him from the stretcher to the bed in the ICU, he apparently vomited a very large amount of blood also.
They gave him a dosage of TPA (not sure if I got that acronym right....but it's the blockage fighting drug) around 11:30 am. They were not able to get a full dose in because he began to bleed more. We watched them do an ultrasound on his heart, to try to detect if foreign debris had gone through a hole in his heart without first passing through the lungs. Normally blood is filtered in the lungs, but if the blood happens to go from one side to the other through a hole in the heart, the lungs do not remove the debris and it's possible something could go to the brain that way.
It is 5:00 now and Dad is sedated, with breathing tube and suction tube to pull blood from his lungs. He has been this way since about 11:00 am today. The doctors confirmed with a CT scan that a stroke has occurred on the left side of his brain. We won't know for sure how badly it affects him until they remove the tubes and stop sedating him. He opens his eyes partly for a second here and there. There is a lot of shivering of his left (paralyzed) side. He moves his right arm a bit also. So far, he has not acknowledged my presence. They will keep him sedated until tomorrow at the earliest, so that he doesn't try to pull out the tubes. The nurse says that he is in stable, but guarded, condition. I take that to mean that he could go downhill at any moment, so I am staying here as long as is practical. He does look peaceful as he sleeps but the tubes look pretty brutal when you think about it.
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