It's complicated.
Dad doesn't understand why I don't feel comfortable driving 8 hrs to upstate New York next weekend to camp with a bunch of friends amidst spotty cel service. I suspect t-mobile doesn't work there at all, nor a good deal of the way there.
He does have a point that fragile is fragile and continues indefinitely. Otoh, it isn't that I'm not willing to go away at all but somewhere easy to fly back from is a start,
At some point I have to find a time to go down and visit with him.
Meanwhile, cardiguy keeps telling mom she needs to decide what to do. I don't know how to advise her. If she doesn't have the valve replaced she will keep having this happen, until response to respiratory distress is "here have some morphine and die peacefully." If she does have the valve replaced, it isn't a sudden walk in the park; it is managing to rehab from a cracked chest, and that is only presuming getting off vent after the surgery, which would require a heart/lung machine during, which has its own issues with potential stroke, renal failure, whatever.