Fathers Day

It was supposed to be another angioplasty, but this didn’t feel right. We had been in the hospital waiting room for much longer than usual. Every so often, the surgeon would come out and say it was “going to be a bit longer.”

But it never dawned on me that something really was wrong when we were summoned to the ICU waiting room so we could go see my father. I was standing next to my mother, stifling my yawns, when the other family in the room became visibly upset. The woman started crying and saying someone was coding.

That someone was my father.

He was having a heart attack while his family stood in the next room, and we had no idea. We just stood there and waited for what seemed like an eternity, until the nurse came and took us back to our familiar waiting room. I still hadn’t put two and two together.

Pops’ surgeon looked exhausted when he finally showed up to the waiting room. Grimfaced, he pulled off his skull cap and sat next to my mother. He explained that the stent he placed into my father’s main artery was not the correct size, and that a blood clot had formed between the stent and the artery wall, causing my father to go into cardiac arrest. They managed to get the stent out, dissolve the clot and insert the correct size stent.

Pops wasn’t even close to being out of the woods yet. He was in intensive care on a lung machine that would breathe for him while his body tried to recover from his latest heart surgery. We had been through so many heart surgeries with Pops, both angioplasties and bypass, that we were expecting the usual routine of a few hours of surgery, stop in and visit Pops and then go to dinner and home exhausted.

We were allowed to go to ICU to see Pops before we were told to go home and rest. He was unconscious.  I was 32 years old, a year younger than my mother when she lost her own father.

No one outside the five of us knew about this latest surgery. Pops didn’t want to worry anyone and asked us to call his mother and siblings after it was over. My older brother made the calls while I sat in the waiting room with Mom. My younger brother was living in San Diego at the time and couldn’t afford to come home.

I lived only a few miles from the hospital, so it was decided I would stay with Pops while my older brother stayed with Mom. The long trips to the hospital exhausted her, and we didn’t see the point in her just sitting there. My brother would stay on the farm with her and take care of things there, while I handled the hospital. He got the better end of the bargain, but nothing would have kept me from my father.

He remained on the lung machine for two days before he became strong enough to breathe on his own. I arrived at ICU shortly after the machine was removed. I had tears in my eyes when he motioned to me. His voice was barely a whisper. “Why was I being held hostage?”

I was confused. “Daddy, you’re in the hospital,” I replied. “You had a heart attack.”

He shook his head, insisting that he had been held hostage on a plane. I smashed the call button so hard I thought I had broken my hand. The nurse came running and then sat me down, explaining that my father had been under heavy sedation while on the machine and that was affecting his memory. She assured me it was temporary. She then turned to him and asked him if he knew who I was.

He said, yes, that I was his daughter. I smiled. Then he called me Patty. My mother’s name. The smile faded.

My father has always been a fan of conspiracy theories, and the sedation only amplified this. Besides the plane episode, he told my younger brother on the phone that he had been held captive in Iraq and fed radioactive material that made him have a stroke. He refused his medication and refused to wear his hospital gown. I would patiently remind him each time that he was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack. He would often tell me that he was not supposed to be there. He kept forgetting he was in the hospital.

The phone calls were the worst. Somehow, he managed to have a telephone in intensive care. The nurses were overworked and exhausted and would dial for him after they ran out of patience with him. My number was first on the list. I was surprised to hear his voice when I picked up the phone. “Something’s not right,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be here.” I explained again that he was and asked to speak to his nurse. Once she assured me he was fine, I told her to take the phone away and that I would be back in the morning.

The nurse called at four that morning to tell me that Pops tried to pull out his IV while the nurses were busy with a fellow patient having a heart attack. He told the nurses that he was going home. I got up, dressed and made the short drive to the hospital fuming with anger. I was going to get through to this man, or he was going to be committed.

Even he knew I was angry when I walked into his room. “I’m in trouble,” he said to me. “You’re damn right you are,” I replied, pushing the call button for the nurse, who got a lecture from me about the telephone.

Yet the phone remained in the room. If I weren’t available for calls, then he would call Mom and upset her. He even called his own mother, who could no longer drive. I found myself calling Grandma Betty, crying to her about my own exhaustion and fears that my father would not come to his senses. She let me cry and told me not to give up hope. He’ll come around, she said.

It happened the day my mother finally visited. He was in his now usual conspiracy mode and once again refusing to wear the hospital gown. After an hour, my mother was so exhausted she ordered the nurse to sedate him so she and my brother could sneak out and go home. She was gone when my father woke up, and this gesture finally seemed to wake him up. He was still not wearing a gown when I arrived at the hospital that afternoon, but he was lucid and throwing a fit about how “your mom left me.”

I wanted to tell him I didn’t blame her, but instead I reminded him that he needed to wear a gown. He told me the nurses didn’t give him one. I said they actually gave him at least six before I called the nurse and requested pajamas. You’re wearing clothes, I commanded. He knew who was in charge. He put on the pajamas and took his medication when the nurses brought it to him. I was no longer tolerating this nonsense, and he knew it.

I left the hospital that Friday night after the doctor told me Pops would go home on Monday. The next morning, Pops called me at seven to tell me to come get him because he was going home. I asked to speak to the nurse, thinking it was more of his shenanigans, but it was true. Pops came around—just like Grandma Betty said he would.

It’s been three and a half years, but Pops does not remember any of it. When he starts laughing at how he basically tortured everyone with his conspiracy theories, I remind him that he refused to wear clothes. The laughter stops.

It was exhausting and stressful and scary, but I’d do it again if I had to because he’s my daddy. Now matter how old I am, he will always be daddy to me.

Happy Fathers Day, Pops.