Lessons learned from a recent family emergency

My family and I recently went through the harrowing, nightmarish experience of almost losing a loved one last month when my dad sustained an unexpected life-threatening injury. Without going into specifics as to what happened I will say he has made tremendous progress in the weeks since the accident, thanks no doubt to a lot of praying, though we are nowhere near out of the dark murky woods yet.

Visiting my dad in the hospital over the past month did, however, allow me to come up with a list of personal life lessons, if not observations I learned throughout this entire ordeal.

1. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” and “Everything works out.” Both sayings apply to the situation my family and I went through. I think, however, I really need to follow the second saying more so than the first. “Everything works out” was what my grandfather, who passed away in 2009, always said to me every time I told him about some upsetting situation I was going through. The end result was always the same. The situation was not as bad as I thought it would be. The same applies here. 
 
2. It’s never too late to attend Sunday mass again. I admit I haven’t been much of a praying person at all in my life and God and I haven’t been on speaking terms for a while. Now for the life of me, I don’t know why. There are a lot of things I have that I should be thanking God for. Things could be a lot worse. I have always equated going to church with working out. I never liked doing neither but somehow when I did attend mass or work out, I felt better afterwards. I don’t know if what happened was a means to get me closer to God or a warning on how quickly I can lose the things I didn’t fully realize I hold dear. One thing I can say is I have been attending mass since Dec. 15, 2012, and unless I am sick or my work schedule gets screwed up again, I won’t stop.
 
3. Hospitals don’t serve decent junk food. When I am stressed which is 99 percent of the time, I eat and it’s not healthy food. The family situation was as perfect of a time for me to pay no attention to my own health and yet I could not find any garbage food to eat at the hospital that would send my blood sugars off the charts. I could not find any cokes whatsoever and the ones I did were in the very small cans. Every drink was diet or had the word “Zero” on the can. The vending machines had no candy, and it was all health food. The closest to any sugar drinks I had were the Powerade drinks. When the cafeteria did serve garbage food like pizza it was not any good to begin with. The healthiest sandwich I ate was a turkey burger and that was fried on the grill. 
 
4. I know my dad must be getting better when he still wishes Mitt Romney won the presidency last November. As my dad was preparing to go into rehab the doctor asked him several questions to test his memory. One of them was who is the president of the United States. My dad asked the doctor if he has to say who the president of the United States is or if he can say who he prefers was president. The doctor said he could either say who is president or his preference. So, my dad said “Romney.” 
 
5. Always be prepared in moments of crisis. If you know you will be spending hours or days on the floor of the intensive care unit and only coming home to wash up and come back a few hours later it would be wise to bring several magazines, a book, a laptop for Internet usage, an iPad or an iPod to watch movies and read magazines online. I had none of these things at my disposal. All I could do was listen to the roar of a medical helicopter land on one of the rooftops in the dead of night and count the number of low flying Southwest Airlines jets come in for landings at Love Field. Which brings me to… 
 
6. I am completely behind on today’s technology. You know you are old and behind on today’s technology when your sister and cousins are all communicating on Facebook and watching tv shows on their iPod. Sitting in the lobby of the ICU unit in the wee hours of the morning of Dec. 16, I was not able to get an ounce of sleep thanks to the Friends episodes I heard playing on one side of the room and someone snoring on the other side of the room. Now I know how Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) felt in that restaurant scene in "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) when he got annoyed having to listen to Quentin Tarantino’s character discuss what Madonna’s "Like A Virgin" was about from across the table and hearing his crime boss, Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney), sitting beside him utter several times the word, “Toby” attempting to figure out why her name is in his address book.
 
7. The television stations offered by the hospitals are worse than the 200 plus stations offered by one’s local internet cable service. THERE IS NOTHING TO WATCH!!!!
 
8. TV medical dramas weren’t lying. There really are highly recommended, egotistic brilliant doctors and surgeons out there in the real world who believe in doing everything they can to save the patient. In other words, that’s ALL they are there to do. They come in on call, do their job, let the immediate family know what’s been done, and leave for the day never to return unless paged. As long as they save the patient I could care less about their bedside manner and lack of people skills. Thank you to my five favorite TV medical doctors Mark Craig (William Daniels – "St. Elsewhere" – 1982-1988), Dr. Robert Romano (Paul McCrane – "ER" 1994-2009), Dr. Jeffery Geiger (Mandy Patinkin – "Chicago Hope" – 1994-2000), Dr. Perry Cox (John C. McGinley - "Scrubs" - 2001-2010) and Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie – "House M.D." – 2004-2012) for proving that point. Sure, the characters were all self-absorbed jerks, but they rarely lost patients.  
 
9. What is up with the dull colored nursing uniforms???? Whatever happened to female nurses dressed in white over the knee dresses, white nylons and shoes with the nurse's caps versus the dull colored slacks, shirts and gym shoes I saw the women nurses wearing at the hospital? Is the idea of a nurse dressed in an all-white virgin dress and white hose just some horny image created by men with dirty minds or did such female nurses actually wear such attractive uniforms at one time? Of course, I could ask the same question of today’s airline stewardesses who I also see wear the same dull, plaid uniforms minus the over the knee skirts and high heels whenever I am flying.
 
10. Family always comes first. Never be afraid to tell your parents, brothers or sisters or whoever to say I love you. Always cherish your time with them. When they get on to you about your weight or whatever, regardless of how old you are, shut the hell up and take it. They are telling you because they care. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t say anything. You never know when the day might come that you suddenly could lose them and then you may be left asking, “What was the last thing I ever said to that person” as you hope that loved one fully recovers so you might still be able to savor what little time that person has left.

©1/2/13