cimorene

My dad, as regular readers likely remember, is a quadriplegic wheelchair user (partial use of arms, C5/6 injury) dating from a car accident 22 years ago when I was home from college.

Because of all the complications inherent in spinal cord injuries, there are a lot of minor scares and hospitalizations, and these have readjusted my anxiety meter over time so that a sudden ambulance ride to the ER is no longer guaranteed to be alarming, or a memorable milestone; especially here, so far away (my parents live with my sister in Louisiana, so the time difference is 8 hours). Oftentimes I never hear the exact details except that it wasn't too serious until he's back home the next day.

But on the 7th he had a minor inpatient operation to remove a small tumor, but then two days later was sent back in an ambulance after a cardiac event that required three defibrillations. There was evidently a hematoma after the surgery that led to internal bleeding that dropped his blood pressure too low (BP is one of those spinal patient issues). Now he's been there all weekend and seems to be feeling better, but apparently they are still investigating some mysterious (?) symptoms (as always, the degree of mystery that actually exists vs. what doctors have remembered to explain to mom and she has remembered to tell us is uncertain). He isn't being kept cold to control his blood pressure anymore and they moved him out of intensive care, anyway.

This uncertainty is a little tough to deal with, even though as a baseline I'm very inured to periods of elevated worry about his health. I guess it's partly that there's not enough information to judge exactly how worried I should be. But I haven't been this worried about him for a few years at least.