(4 of 5) Then a darkness fell...

Previous post in this series: A night like never before...

"There's the doctor. Would he have good news?"

"I have to tell you something not so pleasant. We have been operating on you husband and your father all night. He is now being transferred to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). He's just not doing so well. We have closed his aorta. After much effort, we succeeded. Just now when we wanted to go to the ICU with him, he had cardiac arrhythmias. We went back to the OR and found that he had a clot in his coronary artery. We doped that, and now it's just a matter of seeing how he continues to do."

"How much chance of success does he have?" we ask.

The doctor continued: "We give him a maximum of 10 percent. And if he comes out it remains to be seen how his brain is doing. Because as you well know, we weren't able to do a brain scan, but went straight into surgery because it was too acute."

"Say what? That means he's 9 times more likely to die. What does that mean? How is that supposed to work?" I think to myself.

Mom asks, "Should we stay here? Is there anything else we can do?" The doctor replies, "You can go home for a while. But I would check on him first. But don't be alarmed. He has a lot of devices around him. A heart-lung device is keeping him alive right now." "He doesn't want that. He doesn't want to be on tubes," says Mom emotionally. The doctor replies. "There's nothing I can do about it, unfortunately. He hasn't described that anywhere, and so we will do our best to help him overcome this."

After the doctor leaves again, we take turns to look. "What bells and whistles are all on him." I think. After everyone who wanted to look is back, we sit back down in the waiting room. We agree on what we are going to do. We decide that me and Mom will stay at the hospital until the car arrives, and the rest will go pick up the car.

I stay a while longer, and then go back to dad. It feels like we're going to Grandma's. You would like to go there, and when you leave you would like to be the last one to have seen it, because yes we are going home soon. I sit for a long time watching what the nurses are doing. I ask what they are doing and they answer quietly, as long as it is not too difficult. It is the first time in my life that I understand what Intensive Care means....

Next post in this series: Sit here and watch here with me...