Sunday, December 8, 2013

I think my Dad is dying

He's in hospital, congestive heart failure, heart attack, and wildly uncontrolled (and, until now, undiagnosed) diabetes.  If he dies, the whole family, who has not just written him off, but has actively hated him, will descend upon his widow like a swarm of blow flies.  I can't even post to Facebook about this because there are family members who might see it and then make it their special task to head down there and turn things upside down.

And I can't afford to get down there.  I spoke to him the night before they took him in, and he sounded so awful.  I was pleading with him to see a doctor--a "mechanic" as he calls them.  Had him talked into it, I thought, he spoke of the new little clinic down the road and how he'd been wondering how they were.  That night, he found himself so winded that he was turning blue.  My step-mom called an ambulance, and he's been unconscious since.  Intubated, on a ventilator, in ICU, critical condition.  They knocked one of his teeth out intubating him.  His wife sits with him, reads his beloved New Yorker to him.

They say his heart's pumping at about 10% capacity.

My Dad is going to die.  I'm not feeling at all optimistic.  And if he does, I have no way to get my little family to Georgia to help my step-mom.  No way to get down there to keep her safe from them.

Unless we cancel Christmas.  We'd planned on spending one night in the cheap little motor lodge in Sturbridge, Massachusetts so that our boy could go to Higgins Armory one last time before it closes forever (at the end of this month).  We have scrimped for that, planned to drive the 400+ miles just so he could have that one last trip.  It's THE Christmas gift for all of us.  One night in a cheap  motor lodge, one day at Higgins Armory.

I could cry more, but I fear my heart would flip into full arrhythmia mode.

What I wouldn't give for a "Secret Santa" this year.  Just one with three round-trip train tickets to Atlanta and a few bucks to keep us fed on the way.  I don't know how to ask for help, I don't know how to ask people to give.  But man, it is shaping up to be a miserably bad Christmas.  A devastating one.

I love you, Dad.  Please come back from this.


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