The Chaplin is on his way
Those are the six words that greeted me as I arrived at the hospital emergency room. They are not words you ever want to hear.
I had thought it was going to be a fairly routine precautionary visit. My Dad was having a little difficulty breathing but his vitals were (allegedly) fine and with oxygen he was breathing fine too. My Mom was worried and possibly overreacting. I wasn't there; God wanted to punish me for daring to try to take Sundays off to have a day to myself so I had to rely on Syndee, my Mother, and the Nursing staff. My father had named me as the primary decisionmaker in his advanced directive and everyone looked at me to make a decision.
We played it safe and took him in. Thank God we did. As I arrived, my Mother, Syndee and I were led to the back room of Doom, well away from the rest of the patients or visitors so they won't be able to hear us. This is NEVER a good thing. The only thing they would tell me at first was that his blood pressure was very low and that they were having trouble getting it up.
By the time the poor Chaplin arrived, we were all a mess. We wanted answers. Why didn't the Nursing home catch this? What the hell is wrong? What's going to happen? Poor Syndee felt horrible because she thought my Mom was overreacting and didn't want to take my father to the ER at all. The Chaplin did his best to sort us out and get us to focus and brought the doctor in.
He appears to maybe have had a heart attack. His blood pressure is stable now. He's got a urinary tract infection. Things are perhaps not as dire as they seemed at first, but I'm terrified that I'm going to get that dreaded call again, telling me that he's being medivac'd to Hopkins, or worse.
Now I don't know what to do. Even in a best case scenareo, I'm not sure I want to send him back to Lorien, where they missed this. Any trust my Mom had with them has certainly evaporated. Of course, the worst thing is, I'm not even ready to worry about that problem yet. I *HOPE* that I'm going to have a problem figuring out what to do once he's healthy enough to be released.
I feel like a guy trying to get to the edge of a burning building so he can jump. Worry about the 30 story drop and that whole 9.8 meters per second squared thang later; for now, let's try to get to a place that's not on fire.