Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 12:09:55 -0500
From: Blonde Blue eyes <blondeblueeyes@gmail.com>
Subject: True Love 7

I just stood there in the door-way frozen in place, staring into the
bedroom, for what seemed like hours, but in reality wasn't more than 10
seconds. Every single emotion ran through my mind and body, there he was
laying face down on the bed, the sheet covering the lower half of his body.
But it aside from all that, I still had a feeling in me that something
wasn't right, and finally I walked into his room, and up towards the bed,
and as I stared at his body, it finally hit me as to what was wrong.  There
was no movement in him what so ever, the body in front of me was limp.  I
realized that he wasn't breathing, and as the seconds ticked by I was
wasting time not doing anything.  I finally called 911, and then threw him
over on his back and started doing CPR, but as hard as I tried, I couldn't
get him to start breathing.  Finally I heard the door bell, threw on a pair
of shorts jumped down the steps and let the paramedic in, of course by this
point my ability to speak or do anything productive was quickly
diminishing, and I just showed the guy where he was and finally broke down
into tears and was just pacing back and forth in the bedroom as the guy
continued to try and get him to breathe again. And as a blessing from God,
I heard him cough.

	I ran over to him in the blink of an eye and held his face,
although got pushed out of the way by the emt -- he was saying something
to me, what it was I had absolutely no idea -- all I really cared about
was the fact that the man in front of me was breathing and still alive.
Finally in coming to the few senses that I had left in me they lifted him
off the floor and took him in the ambulance, told me where they were taking
him -- I nodded my head, ran to my room threw on shoes, and literally
flew out of the house into the car and to the hospital-joke about it is
that I actually made it there before they did.  As I ran into the ER, they
pulled up, and as the back doors opened and the stretcher rolled out, and
again what I saw, I almost collapsed myself. An oxygen mask, tubes running
from his arms.  It was my worst nightmare coming true, the thought of
losing him, and truly being alone the rest of my life, with nothing than
myself. And I started cursing him, then myself, then him, and then anyone
else I could think of to blame for this -- and then thought again, how
fucking selfish that was.

	In the midst of desperation and moments of insanity, one of the
male nurses came up to me and put his arm around me and said something to
me that I will never forget "Your partner is unconscious -- but alive and
stable for the time being." The second part of that statement did not
register in my head, all I heard was `your partner'.  I looked up at the
guy, and actually smiled but then said to him "He's actually my father, but
thanks for telling me." After I said that, he gave me an odd look and just
said `Oh, sorry'.  (As a side note, my father and I look very little alike
-- I took about 95% of my looks from my mother, other than my height, and
hair color which is like my father, I look completely like my mother.) And
I just looked back at him again, and smiled, and asked if I could see him,
and if a physician had seen him yet, and he just nodded and took me to him.
I followed him into one of the bay's and again the being that I saw in
front of me was not someone that I knew.  Hooked up to all of these
monitors, and tubes running from here and there, this was not the man I
knew as my father.  I just kept shaking my head, I couldn't believe what I
was seeing.  Finally, as I myself came back to reality, I now needed to
know what the hell happened.

	Of course finding a physician in an ER at 330am is not exactly
easy, but finally was able to track down the one that had evaluated him. I
grabbed the man by the arm, and told him the only person he was going to be
talking to was me, I wanted the entire story from start to beginning and
not to dance around or give me any bullshit. And what he said felt like
that knife being but back into me and being twisted and turned again. "Your
father had a massive heart attack, from what we believe was a blockage in
the left, valve.  While he is stable at the moment, in being brutally
honest with you, I can't say to you right now that he will survive or
not. He is scheduled for a number of tests that should give us a better
idea of how this happened.  At the moment he is on a blood thinner that is
allowing the blood to pass through.  If in fact it is a blockage, if he is
strong enough we'll take him in for surgery and remove it.  But again, that
is not something that can be done if it will cause more harm than not.  But
don't lose faith yet, give him a chance to recover for a bit, I think he'll
come around soon, and then we'll go from there. But I will tell you this,
it was you who saved his life, if you hadn't found him when you did, he
would have died."  And then he walked away. And I just stood there in a
state of shock once again, and kept asking myself why?  Why him? Why now?

	As I stood there again just staring at my father, laying in a bed,
basically clinging to life, I looked up to god and just asked for a one
favor -- to just keep him alive.  I've never been a religious person,
I've never gone to services, was always told I should believe what I want
to. But today I asked God, to just keep him alive.  Nothing more.  I'd
rather have him alive and in a coma next to me then in a coffin
underground.  And then, even further I realized, there really was no other
family.  I would call my brothers but I haven't heard from them in month's
and lord knows where they are.  But that's it.  There's no one else, my
grandparents are dead, and my father was an only child, and my mother's
side well, non-existent for the past 17 years.  So wow, yes if I lost him,
I really would be alone.  I couldn't let that happen -- a selfish
thought? Maybe.  But I wasn't going to let it happen I didn't care what it
would take or to what lengths I would have to go, I wasn't losing him.  It
was at that point that I realized that once again, my life had just taken
another turn down another path, that I had no clue where it was going to
lead me to.

	Finally, after hours of sitting in the ER he was moved into a
room. I asked why not critical care, where he would be consistently
monitored, and have a full time one-on-one nurse, and the response was,
"he's in a coma now, there's no reason for it, we can watch him from the
desk on camera, if anything changes, we'll know."  So there it was, my
hero, my want and desire, laying in a hospital bed, in a coma.  And I had
no idea what to do. But one thing I did know, I wasn't going to leave his
side any time soon.  So with that decided, I called my roommate from the
dorm's asked him to pack a bag for me, and bring it to the hospital.  I
didn't know for how long I was going to be spending time in this room, but
it was going to be as long as needed.  I sat myself down in a chair, next
to the bed, and just looked at him, no stared at him, almost in a trance, I
saw nothing else around me, heard nothing else, just him. His eyes were
closed and his hands lay at his side.  He looked peaceful, I saw no pain, I
took his hand into mine-it felt so cold -- not actually to physical
touch, but the `feeling' of it was cold, and that in itself sent shivers
down my own spine, and made me question, was this a futile effort?  Was all
that was left was a man being kept alive by a machine?  Again that thought
alone made me start to cry, it really did feel like torture, complete and
utter torture.  But no, I wasn't going to let me think differently, he was
going to come around, I would have my father back in one piece, healthy and
with me.  But how long that hope would last, was unclear to me.

	As the days went by, and I sat there and stared and talked to a
silent man, a man who just layed there with no movement, no sign of life
other than the continuous beeping of a machine to say that the organs
continued to function, I talked and talked to him.  If he heard me I did
not know, I don't think I really cared.  And as the days turned into weeks,
and I continually talked to him, there was no change.  I asked the doctors
over and over why they weren't doing the surgery, and the response was
always the same, the blood thinner is working, it is slowly shrinking the
blockage, and given that he is stable there is no reason to add more trauma
to his heart if it's not needed.  As much as I wasn't willing to accept it,
I got opinion after opinion and the answer was always the same. It's safer
not to do it.  And what could I do but to just listen and accept it.  I was
asked over and over, why don't I just go home and take a break. And I
always laughed and replied "if the only family you had was lying in a
hospital bed would you go home?"  And usually there was no response or a
shaking of the head.  I just continued to sit there, and talk to him, and
think and contemplate life over and over again.  And before I even realized
it 2 months had gone by, and other than a few slight movements there had
been no change. And I was finally asked the question that I didn't want to
hear, or be asked.  And I just said no, before they even finished the
question. "I'm not pulling the plug, I don't care, if I sit here till next
year." Although in reality, maybe I really was being irrational, after 2
months of nothing, no response, no improvement, was this really a futile
effort on my part?



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