Spent ALL NIGHT @ Hospital

#1 February 15th, 2006, 02:37 PM

Ok, so this is an update on my Grandpa. Yes, he is still in the hospital!
My sister called me around 9:30 pm last night saying they would be taking him down for surgery in the next hour. She hurried and got ready then came and picked myself and my other sister up so we could ride together and not have to walk in the parking lot late at night alone. Anyhow- We barely got to see him by the time we got up there because they were prepping him for surgery. The rest of the family was already in the waiting room and had thought he was already taken down. He seemed to be in good spirits... only because they told him he was having surgery FINALLY-- after 2 weeks of being down there and them going back and fourth on their diagnosis. So frustrating! Before he was told he was having surgery, he was so down and to the point where he actually had a "Father/Son" talk with my dad... basically telling him Goodbye and all the things he wanted my dad to take care of. How hard would that be for my dad, and for my grandpa????? It made me cry just hearing my mom tell me about it. Anyhow- Grandpa was being his usual self right before surgery, he was cracking jokes and giving the nurses a hard time!
They made the decision to do surgery because my dad insisted on talking to his doctor. My dad told him that if he didn't have answers within 24-48 hours they would be pulling him out of our local hospital and taking him to Indianapolis to IU Med-Center. The doctor explained that he had been on vacation for almost 2 weeks and the doctor filling in was clearly not doing his job--- something needs to be done about that!
So about the surgery- the decided to go in and basically do exploratory surgery. They came to find out that the swelling and pressure from the bleeding caused his intestines to close off.... and there actually was no bowel obstruction. They drained the blood and made a small incision into his intestines to clear out everything that had been backed up. They went ahead and put him in ICU on a respirator and we have limited his visitors to just family. It looks like we have conquered hill #1 and Grandpa should be on a SLOW, very slow, road to recovery. We just don't understand why it took 2 weeks to do all of this!!!!!!!

We were at the hospital from 10pm- 2:30 am... I didn't get to sleep until 4am and Brinlee had to be at the doctor at 9am. What a day!!!!!!