I got a call at 12:22 pm to say my dad had not shown up to work (very unlike him) when he was due in around 7am. I raced into the car and begin speeding 70mph down residential roads on the trek to his house 20 miles away.
While driving I had called nearby family members that could get there faster with the instructions to just call 911 if his van was still at home, as clearly something would be wrong, and not to tell me anything further until I got there - I was already a panicked tearful mess.
My dad had a history (as does most of our family) of strokes. 5 and 6 years prior he had two very minor strokes that left him with no deficits and less than a week hospital stay each.
When I got there, the paramedics and fire were already there working on him. He was alive, but basically unconscious. After searching the home to rule out drug overdose (I guess they have too) and ruling out carbon monoxide, he was transported to the nearest hospital. While being lifted on the stretcher he was able to mumble a few words to me "I don't know what this is".
The ER ran a battery of tests for infection as well as CTs for stroke, everything was negative, for a while we all including the doctors sat there puzzled. It wasn't until MRIs finally came back that it was discovered there was a lesion in both side of his thalamus and brain stem, however, they still didn't believe it was a stroke. He presentation wasn't "typical". They started treating him for everything under the sun, at one point he was on 6 different high powered antibiotics.
He was transferred to the ICU and that night, intubated because he stopped being able to swallow his own saliva and they feared he would aspirate. He was on "life support" for 3 days. At the moment, the diagnosis was stroke, with no known cause. It was 2 full days before we ever actually talked to a neurologist for an official diagnosis.
Her words were, when I walked in the room what I saw was a lot better than I expected looking at his brain scans. We came to learn the thalamus is a pretty important part of your brain, and to have both sides now essentially dead, they expected him to be in a permanent coma. As far as I was concerned, he was.
He responded to physical stimuli on both sides. He did not respond to voice commands except for occasionally on his left side. His eyes were both non reactive and one pupil was incredibly large than the other. He slept for what seemed like forever, in reality I believe it was about 3 full days.
On day 1 I had already made the decision that I wanted him transferred to a different hospital where all of his doctors were, this wouldn't actually happen until day 5 due to red tape and stupid insurance. In the meantime, he was taken off the ventilator day 3 or 4, and gotten out of bed to sit slumped over, but awake and alive. I was actually out of the room when they got him up, it was quite shocking to see him in the chair, I cried. When I went over his first words to me were, "Are you going to take care of both of us" - At this point I thought, he's going to be fine.
My aunt has dementia, it started around 2013 and quickly went down hill. She is significantly older than her siblings (a child of a previous marriage) and was more like a mom/grandma to them and I, and my dad being the fix everything and everyone person he is insisted we keep her home instead of in nursing care. Over the course of her disease I had taken over a lot of the responsibilities caring for her, grocery shopping, meal prep, coordinating her medical care, etc. This is, what I assume, he was referring to when he asked if I could take care of both of them.
This glimmer of hope that he was going to be okay and had all his marble intact, would be the last. He was soon transferred to my hospital of choice where 10,000 more tests were done, and bi-lateral thalamic stroke remained the diagnosis. What came in the days, weeks, and months following is more than I could've ever managed, and what lead me to start this blog.
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