“Be strong, be fearless, be beautiful. And believe that anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you.” ~Misty Copeland
Medical Science is cray-cray
When life gets crazy I write. It is and always has been my coping mechanism. My more healthy coping mechanism I might add, because I have had some less than stellar ones in my life. Get my thoughts down, organize them, maybe say something profound, or just spew like I can’t stop. Like I am probably doing now, so my apologies, but it helps me.
Despite knowing procedures are routine. Despite knowing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, go through it, open heart surgery it is still fucking scary. And yet, at the same time it is also crazy cool. When you think about all that modern medicine can do to save someone’s life; cut open a chest, hold a heart in your hands and bypass arteries with veins, it is frickin amazing. Scary, but amazing.
Triple Bypass
My Dad has struggled this past year with his health and not only have I gotten a lot of phone calls from my Mom being in New York, I have also found him several times having fallen. And yes, like the commercial says, “He couldn’t get up,” and yes I was f&*ing scared. It is both scary and insanely humbling seeing your parents age. As someone who has older parents anyway, my Dad will be eighty in a month, it is even more so.
My Dad spent most of May in the hospital. He was out not even thirty-six hours and he woke up at three in the morning complaining of tightness in his chest. Not pain, but tightness. That right there sums up my Dad. (well throw in Dunkin Donuts and Red Sox, and THEN it sums up my Dad) He doesn’t complain. Well he doesn’t complain about pain, other things, don’t get him going. So with the “tightness” NOT pain, he grumbled about going to the hospital, but he also didn’t fight to hard. Fast forward a week and a half later; a week that was filled with me waking up at 3:30 to drive back to New Hampshire from New York, watch the kiddos so my Mom could be with my Dad and then driving over two hours to the hospital so I could be with my parents, I am now sitting in the step-down unit, drinking Dunkin (I KNOW who am I?) while he sleeps after he was moved from ICU this morning, and after having triple bypass surgery.
Love and Support
It has been a whirl wind. Life has been crazy, but my Dad is alive, with a pretty gnarly scar and medical science is still pretty cool. And while I have gone through ALL the emotions, I am filled with an insane amount of gratitude. I can’t even begin to express it. From my best friend who has been going through it with me, to my cousins who have been texting non-stop, to my Aunt and Cousin who drove eight hours round trip in one day so my mom didn’t have to be alone, from another friend who Venmoed me money for coffee, to my friend who is a nurse at this very hospital and came in on her day off and not only brought us coffee (because they only serve the aforementioned Dunkins), but also sat with my Mom and I, as we waited for the surgery to be over and to hear what the surgeon had to say. We felt all the love and support.
It isn’t about who is standing before your grave, or there to scatter your ashes in the sea, but those who are there when it matters, when it is hard, when it is honestly downright uncomfortable. And those people are the ones that matter. They are the ones you need to hold close to. Family, friendships, and relationships in general are so flipping important. It isn’t work, soccer games, or vacations. Life is messy. We will all be inconvenienced at some point, but it is what we do with those inconveniences, whether we say to ourselves, oh to bad, sucks to be them, or whether we step up and rise to the occasion and are there for those whom we claim are important to us.
It is how I live. Family and friends are insanely important to me. Not just when they are living high on life, but when it is low and quite honestly, messy too. “In sickness and in health” shouldn’t just apply to marriage vows, but every relationship. And I am so insanely grateful to my family and friends who also live by that and have been there for my Mom, Dad, and I. I know the next couple days and weeks really are going to be long, especially for my Dad, but I am praying the worst is over. And until then I will be sitting in the hospital feeding my Dad ice chips and drinking Dunkin’s because they don’t have anything else. Only for him, though I know he is secretly proud that I finally caved and am drinking it. Of course he better not get his hopes up about me rocking a Red Sox jersey.
Thank you fro the bottom of my heart to those who have been there for us! <3
