i have a blog for talking about my dad being in the hospital, but i can't manage to publish to it at the moment. so i'm going to post this here, and eventually it will be posted in both places.

here's a link to abby's live journal where she's talking about my dad going into the hospital for a minor surgical procedure, two years ago today. i'm going to cut and paste the contents here, just so it's reproduced in multiple places.

she says:

Two years ago today, my father went into the John Naseff Heart Hospital at United Hospital in Saint Paul. He went in for an angiogram, as he had been having trouble with being out of breath, and a little pain in his chest. Dr. Alexander performed the angiogram. During the procedure, it was determined that my father needed angioplasty, as he had two arteries 90% blocked, and one partially blocked. Dr. Alexander performed the angioplasty and proceeded to nearly kill my father by nicking a hole in an atery and not noticing.

This lead to life-threatening procedures, life-threatening surgeries, a tracheotomy, blood transfusions, intubation, a drug-induced coma, sepsis, over three weeks in intensive care, 63 days in the hospital, and 3/4 of a million dollars of hospital bills, not to mention, lasting trauma for all those involved.

Through some number of miracles/persistence/dumb luck, my father is still alive today. I don't even know the number of times my family heard "People don't live through that" and "That should have killed him".

While what happened to my father was a largely random series of catastrophes, I still have this to say: whatever you can do, try to avoid having to have angioplasty. That's my plan, anyway.