Okay, here goes with the story as best I can. I’ll repeat myself a bit from before.
Two weeks ago, on Monday (thirteen days), my father went into the hospital for back pain and complaining of numbness in his hands, feet, and mouth. While there, he lost the ability to walk and speak. then write, then in a terrifying episode during a spinal tap, breathe. He was in code blue for about thirty seconds, and then they got him on the respirator.
They moved him to the University of Virginia hospital once he went into a coma, and he got less responsive and his brainwaves got slower and slower as time passed. The MRIs were inconclusive, and then I got a call a week ago, on Sunday, that they were fearing brain damage from the code blue. He shouldn’t have been in a coma, and they were very worried that there was oxygen deprivation before the code blue. I made plans to head to Staunton, VA from Kansas City, and picked up the speed of those plans when I got a call Monday morning from my sister saying “The doctors want to meet with the entire family on Wednesday.”
That sounded bad. Obviously. My wife and I got in the car and drove 1000 miles in two days, arriving on Wednesday. A quick trip to UVA later, and I saw my father.
I’m a writer, or at least I aspire to be one. But anything I could write here would fall short of how I felt when I saw him. You never want to see your parents in any state of weakness, and seeing my father lying in a hospital bed, respirator attached to his face, countless tubes running back and forth, beeps and whistles sounding every couple of seconds… it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.
I sat with him for a while, but had to leave the room before long. It was too difficult.
The next morning, before we left to meet with the doctors, the hospital called my sister to say that one of his lungs collapsed. Cue more panicking. That turned out to be a false alarm.
The doctors told us that basically, they didn’t know what was happening. They tested for about two dozen things it could be, and they didn’t know if it was just Guillian-Barre (of such a strength as to be unprecedented) or GBS plus something else attacking his brain. However, there was no brain damage, and his vitals remained strong. In addition, his eyes had both responded to light, the first good sign since he went into the coma. Cause for optimism.
Thursday was a terrible day but had nothing to do with Dad, so I’ll let that one go.
Friday was better. I went over to see Dad again, this time having my wife come back with me. We were in there twice, and I sat down with him for a while, reading a bit, talking to the nurse and to Dad, generally handling it better than I did before. We left the hospital to return home, and Meghan told me something she noticed that I didn’t.
When we went into the hospital, Dad’s blood pressure was something like 130/80. Whenever Meg and I talked to each other or just sat there, Dad’s blood pressure stayed where it was or dropped a bit. When we either talked about him or talked to him, it rose. Now, this could be coincidence, absolutely, and she was ready to dismiss it as such until we stood to leave.
I walked and stood next to Dad’s hospital bed and told him good-bye, that we were leaving the next day and that I’d be recording him messages and sending them each day so he could keep hearing my voice, to help bring him back, and that I knew he was still in there and he’d be just fine.
While I was doing this, his blood pressure spiked, twenty to thirty points higher than it had been at any point.
Meghan reassures me about this at every step of the way heading back home and then out of town yesterday. “He’s still there. He’s in there. He was trying to respond. He heard you, he’s in there, and he’ll be fine. He was trying to respond to you.”
Halfway across Kentucky, about 40% of the way through our journey and over halfway through our journey for the day, I get a call. Dad’s nodding his head and shaking his head in response to questions.
“Is your name [Dad] Bowyer?”
(nods yes)
“Are you in pain?”
(nods yes)
After they give him morphine, “Are you in plain?”
(shakes his head no)
I about burst into tears from relief. He’s going to be all right.
I, unfortunately, have a job and a life here that I have to maintain, so I am back in Kansas City. I’m recording a message every day and sending it so it can be played for Dad to hear, and when he’s able I’m going to talk to him every day. When recovery starts --and it will be a long recovery, we’re talking months – I will be making the occasional trip out to help with that and be there for him in person.
I went out to Virginia expecting to stay for a funeral. Instead, I have no small amount of hope, and I think that in some way, me being there helped bring him back.
To all of you who emailed me, messaged me, prayed for me, and told me that I and my family were in your thoughts, thank you. That means more to me than I can adequately express. To have this kind of support from people who don’t know me from a voice on the other side of the screen, be it in Madden, Dominions 3, or just here on QT3, it’s been absolutely huge. Thank you all so much.
