So What's Wrong With Victor? (Pt.2)

I don't know how familiar you all are with what it's like to be in the ICU, or even spending time at a hospital in general, but I definitely was NOT prior to my dad getting sick.  Let's just say I'm very thankful for my health and my super immune system! (Evidently inherited from my dad, more on this later.)  It smells weird, it feels weird, it sounds weird..... and they expect people to be able to sleep, eat, and function in there?!  GAH!  I don't know what I would do if I had to be stuck in there for any amount of time!  But my dad, trooper that he is, has been living in a strange white, beeping, buzzing ICU room for over 3 months.

I hate it.

When Kim and I arrived we found my dad barely responsive and hooked up to all kinds of machines:  pain meds, abdominal drains, heart and oxygen monitors, feeding tubes..... I don't know if I can even remember what all was there now but it was terrifying, absolutely terrifying.  When he was coherent, he had no idea where he was or what had happened.  We stayed by his side and tried to offer whatever comfort we could.  (Daddy likes when you scratch his head while he's sleeping!)

I had to leave prematurely because I felt a sinus/head cold coming on and I was afraid of potentially causing any more complications for my dad by passing that on to him.  We thought he would be getting healthy now that he had that procedure done and would soon be returning to normal now that those toxic fluids were gone.  So with a heavy heart I got back on the plane to Dallas; Kim returned to El Paso shortly after I left to return back to work.

***

Please allow me a moment to flesh out this story a bit more with some info about what was going on in my life at the time, I will to try to be as concise as possible!

My wedding was set for Sept. 8, 2012 and my family had been making arrangements for months.  I even enlisted my dad as my personal style guru and veil-maker!  When he first was hospitalized in Aug., my dad was stressing about "messing up my plans", but we did our best to assure him that there was absolutely no way the show would go on without him!  Things were still on track when he was released the first time and all seemed well.  Then he was sent to Albuquerque, and we moved the date back to Oct. 20th because it seemed (at the time) he'd be well enough by then.  Although this was going to cause things to be a bit wonky -- our honeymoon had already been scheduled for Oct. 15-19 -- the most convenient time for the rest of the family and to allow my dad more recovery time was for the wedding to be after we got back!  haha!  Unfortunately, things again didn't go as planned and so our official ceremony remains TBA.  My dad has expressed much sadness about this, but I keep telling him not to be crazy!!  It wouldn't be the wedding of my dreams if he wasn't there to share it!  I am more than happy to wait until he's better, not just because he'll be able to walk me down the aisle, but it gives me plenty of time to make sure I still fit into my dress!

Wah-wah. 

My husband and I (officially wed thanks to our friend Jim and mailing in paperwork) were able to enjoy our first day together in San Antonio on the River Walk and retired to our hotel.  All jokes and innuendos will have to wait because it was on this night I received the scariest phone call of my life.

[I'm very hesitant to talk about this just yet, not for dramatic effect, but because I worry that in some way it may negatively impact my dad's recovery if he finds out just what all he's been through before he's 100% well again.  I think it's important though for his family and friends to know just how scary a journey it's been so far as well as a testament to just how STRONG my dad has been through everything, so I will share it.]

I received a call from the doctors saying that during a procedure, Victor's heart stopped for 5 minutes.

Everything gets kind of hazy for me after this point, it was late and I was terrified I might lose my daddy.  5 whole damn minutes my dad's heart had stopped beating.  It was unfathomable.  It tore me apart.  The doctor told me dad was critical, but stable for now.  What had happened was that my dad had been forming abscesses in his abdomen, larger and more severe than the drains were able to keep up with.  The fluid coming from his pancreas (which by this point was over 2/3 necrotic tissue) was filing his body with toxins.  His body was going septic, he had infections in his blood, his white blood cells were out of control, his body all swollen.  He had been placed on a ventilator and there was a pocket of fluid forming around his left lung making it hard for him to breathe.  The doctors had no choice but to go in and try to remove the abscesses and potentially some of the dead parts of his pancreas.

After much debating, my husband and I decided that it'd be best if we got some sleep and drove to Albuquerque the next morning since it was so late and we had already had a long day of driving behind us.  The next day we met up with my mom, her husband, and my grandmother in New Mexico to be with my father.