We Were Bound For Some Excitement

I guess things had been slowing down so we needed something to jump start our boredom. That boredom was interrupted by my sister calling to tell my our dad had had a stroke. On Tuesday afternoon, my mom had to call 911 when she realized my dad was experiencing a stroke right in front of her. She gave him aspirin while on the phone with 911. Paramedics came out and transported him to a hospital. I emailed super-hero and he came home as quickly as possible. I wanted to just drive over there, but I had all three kids and he told me to wait for him. So I sat in the car with all three kids strapped in and waited. Then when he got home, I didn't think I would be able to drive slower than 80 mph, so I asked him to drive. He can't win of course, because I complained the whole way there that he was driving too slow. Whenever I feel he's poking along at an unacceptable speed, I say "pretend we're on our way to an OSU football game". I always think that's going to work, but he doesn't find it funny.

They did an MRI and determined it was a stroke and the neurologist said there was a three hour window of opportunity for administering a certain medicine. There were risks involved (how can there not be?) and dad agreed to have the drug. They said his speech should improve, but we still haven't seen that. My cousin in CA is a speech therapist for stroke patients, so I called her up and got some great advice and heads-up on things we should be expecting from the SLP. By Tuesday night he was moved to the ICU and removed the oxygen tubes. He seemed very coherent, just unable to speak. He understood when you talked to him (of course, he's lost a lot of hearing from his years in a paper mill) just was unable to answer. We even tried letting him write something, but being without his glasses and his right hand so weak, it was illegible. When I saw him on Wednesday, he was sitting up and eating a bit of dinner.

He'll probably be there one more night and then we're off on another adventure and seeing how his speech comes back and physically what he's able to do. We're so thankful for God's protection that he wasn't driving at the time and that mom caught it so quick.