i kiss goodbye the howling beast on the borderline that separated you from me..

The last time I posted something personal, it was the middle of December and my dad was in and out of the hospital constantly because of his heart disease. For a while we were really worried that something was going to happen to him. This was around Christmastime when we would go to the hospital every day to be with my dad as he lay in the intensive care unit.

One day the week before Christmas they kept him overnight to run more tests on him, and his defibrillator went off in the middle of the night. Everyone became really worried that it would go off again and the next time he would not survive. My dad's heart was mostly dead tissue, and every heart attack he suffered would only worsen his condition.

The doctors decided to expedite the series of tests my dad was taking - for his liver, his eyes, his teeth, a psych exam, etc. - that would qualify him for a heart transplant. He had been going into the hospital every week to take another in the long series of tests, and since he had diabetes we were really worried that his liver would be too damaged to withstand the transplant operation. They also found a bunch of polyps in his colon and for a few days we were even worried that he had cancer and would not qualify for the transplant.

They did all of the tests in a couple of days, and on the Saturday before Christmas we were relieved to find out that my dad qualified for the transplant operation. We initially thought that it would take at least a few weeks to get a new heart - I guess we were wrong! On the morning of Sunday before Christmas, I got a call saying that my dad will be going in for surgery. I rushed to the hospital in time to say goodbye to him before he went under. My mom was crying and everyone was really emotional because there was a real possibility that something could go wrong and he wouldn't survive the operation.

The operation took almost 2 days, with all the prepwork, and they opened him up again in the middle of the night to make some last minute adjustments, I guess this is routine. During this time we sat in the waiting room, waiting for news from the doctors. I would go out every once in a while to finish my Christmas shopping. My dad was still unconscious on Christmas day and we spent the afternoon at L. and M's, K. came home that night and her family got me so many nice presents, I was really surprised by how nice they were to me. I can't believe her bro and his gf actually made us such a nice gift, you have to see it - it's a framed set of pics of the fishing trip we took together last summer, and they made a really nice frame for it.

It took my dad several days to totally regain consciousness. He looked really bad at first - I didn't even like to look at him, he was so weak and it was hard for him to move his limbs. But we stayed at the hospital, occasionally me and K. would go out and shop along Michigan Ave., or go to the art museum. The crowds were still out after Christmas, we'd go out to eat at Foodlife or Elephant and Castle and just watch all the people walk by, as we held hands and thought about how we would be married in a few months. This was the best Christmas I've ever had.

My dad began to improve rapidly - they moved him out of intensive care, they told him he was the star of the cardiac unit as it was taking him less than half the time than they expected to recover. Soon my dad was walking around fine and his appearance also changed - the color came back to his face and he seemed much more healthier than I remember him looking in years, even decades. The puffiness in his lower extremities due to his heart not being able to pump the blood through his body forcefully enough, went away. He started talking articulately, like his old self. My dad now has the heart of a 30 year old man, I guess that's to be expected.

They sent him home sooner than everyone expected. He has to take these anti rejection medicines every day, but he continues to improve to this day He still has to go back to the hospital for monitoring but he should be out of the house, driving around, even playing golf, vacationing, exercising again, etc. in a couple of months. They say that heart transplant patients are able to go on and do incredible things - climb mountains, run marathons etc. - I might ask my dad to go jogging with me in a few months. At the very least I'm going to spend a lot of time with him and play a lot of golf with him this summer. It is really a miracle. I owe everything to the doctors at NMH - they not only saved my dad's life, but they gave him an infinitely better quality of life, and gave him decades more to live.