Heavy

My heart is feeling so heavy these past few weeks. Unfortunately, not in the "full of love and everything is too wonderful" kind of heavy...more like the "so many awful things are going on and it's difficult for me to cope" kind of heavy.

It's crazy, because I left for San Diego in hopes that I could be relieved of the stress I had been feeling, but I've come home only feeling more stressed and effing exhausted. The week started out just fine, I got to see a lot of friends...but everything changed Wednesday. My Dad started feeling awful chest pain, so Kyle and I accompanied my mom and him to the hospital since poor Omied had been sick in bed (with what we thought was food poisoning). Kyle and I were in the ER waiting room until 6am, not knowing what was going on. But we were both pretty sure it would be bad news, it wouldn't have taken them 5 hrs if everything was fine. It turns out that my dad had a mild heart attack, and on two other occasions, was on the verge of a major heart attack and had pretty much all the doctors in the ER trying to prevent that from happening as my Dad's body couldn't handle a major heart attack. In addition to the heart attack, my Dad was also diagnosed with a Pneumonia and Diabetes.

Boy do I hate hospitals...after an incredibly stressful night in the ER my dad was finally moved upstairs. The reason for his heart attack could have been easily prevented...sort of. My Dad is on dialysis because his kidney is failing, so last week when he went into the dialysis clinic, they spent a lot of time prodding around his arm for the vein, and as a result, his arm became pretty swollen. But that didn't stop them from doing the dialysis on his incredibly swollen arm (it was honestly 3X it's normal size). So after getting into an intense argument with the dialysis clinic about how they don't care about him, and they only see him as a dollar sign...my Dad decided to take a break from dialysis until his arm healed. I think if he had only skipped one day, it would have been fine, but he skipped two sessions. Eventually his heart started to become suffocated by the excessive water surrounding his heart/lungs that his body couldn't process, as well as trying to fight off the toxins the kidney couldn't remove. Thus, the heart attack.

The worst part about all of this is seeing my Dad looking so weak and defeated. Neither of those words should ever describe my Dad. He is a loud-mouth pompous asshole who has no filter when it comes to speaking his mind. Seeing him hooked up to a bunch of machines supporting his life, and complicity agreeing with whatever the doctors and nurses are telling him...it's so saddening. Luckily, he somehow convinced the doctors to use his swollen arm again for the dialysis he needed...they were trying to do a minor surgery in his neck to place a catheter type instrument in his chest for the dialysis. While it was a minor surgery, it was probably better for him not to undergo anymore stressful situations, or anesthesia.

I guess it was naive of me to want just one more normal Thanksgiving. One filled with the sounds of my dad angrily/happily shouting at the football game on TV, and my mom singing while I helped her cook dinner. As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. Omied's food poisoning turned out to be the norovirus...which means my entire family spent the weekend vomiting our guts out.

So here I am at work....sipping on ginger ale and munching on saltine crackers, wondering how life got so complicated. All I want to do is sleep, but here I am. Sigh...maybe my Christmas vacation will be better?