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Friday Day 1-ER

We all got the call around 9pm. Come home, your daddy is sick with the flu and the doctor told me to call you in.

I was in Birmingham taking pictures at a high school playoff game and Monica was on her way to Nashville for a teacher conference. I scratched back to Tuscaloosa and threw stuff in a bag and got to the ER around 1:30 am Saturday morning. Monica and Nick got there around 1:00.

The news wasn’t good. Apparently, Daddy was feeling bad Tues-Thursday and when Mom talked to him Thursday night, she convinced him to go to the doctor Friday and he agreed, which was uncommon for him to even consider the doctor. Well, he never made it on his own.

Mom called and called and he never answered. She called the dr and they told her in a roundabout HIPPA way that he never showed up. She drove to the deer camp and daddy was disoriented and pale. She got him to the Dr. and they took a few looks at him and called an ambulance.

In the ER, he thought he was still at work. He would try to fix all his tubes and wires and get them where he thought they should go. He told mom that he was the mechanic. He thought he was in the year 1963.

About that time all the results came back and the dr. said to call the family in. Little did we know, but by law, the ER staff has to contact the Organ Donor organization to let them know that there might be a potential donor soon. I’m glad we did not find out that particular flavor of “what the hell??” until much later in the week…

The rest of that morning was a whirlwind of ventilator, fever, meds for low blood pressure and IV with lots of medicine and the elusive Dilantin which will play into the next 6 days…I’ll never forget that name…dilantin.

The only hope we had was that daddy was still alive and heart beating. Beyond that, we didn’t have much to go on.

Dad-One year later | Katrina Runs

Sunday 7th of November 2010

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