I’m sitting here in Texas, typing on very slow (and I mean very) computer, it’s 1:07 in the morning and we have to be at the hospital at 5:30 in the AM so I should be in bed at least catching a few zzzz’s….but I am here…..blogging. Can you tell I can’t sleep?

Update on dad….he looks great. He has his sense of humor, that’s for sure! If you know my dad and you know me…well, you get the two of us together….it’s trouble. We had to go to the hospital today to do the pre-op stuff and of course, they hand him a clip board full of more paperwork! He then hands it over to my stepmom for her to fill out…passing the buck as he called it.

When she got to the checklist it was apparent that this was not going to be just a regular “filling out that forms” task! We laughed so much that the ladies at the desks kept looking over to see what on earth was going on.

Question: Do you have heartburn?

Dad: Umm…..nope the flame fizzled out apparently, they have to go in and relight it!

Question: Are you pregnant?

Dad: said to wife – Yep, I’m having a fire truck…wanna see it’s hose? (this is in reference to the Hummer commercial during the Super Bowl…the Robot and Dinosaur have a “little monster” and it’s a Hummer, but dad’s spin on it was the fire truck. LOL)

That’s just a very small sample of what was going on…..when he walked up to turn the papers back in the lady mentioned that we had way too much fun doing that and if the “Do you need a Pregnancy Test?” question was checked….she knew why! It did help lighten the mood. We tend to joke when stressed.

This hospital has a program called “Heart Cares” and they have volunteers who are previous heart patients. One of these volunteers comes and talks with you and gives you a full tour of where everything is at and where the ICU is etc.. They also give you firsthand experience to your questions and that helped my dad with some of his concerns. The gentleman that showed us around had his bypass 11 years ago and he was just wonderful to talk to. It was very reassuring to talk with someone who’s been there, done that.

We then were brought up to ICU and shown where dad will be for about 5 days. It’s a new state of the art facility. The chief nurse came in and told us what will happen from the time we arrive at 5:30 to when we get to see him in ICU. She told us what to expect, how not to be scared how he looks, how he can be depressed, I mean she covered everything and really went into so much detail that I know I left feeling so much better about things than I did before. I know my dad did too…his questions were more about the mechanics of it all….and that makes sense because the man is a mechanic! But she answered all his questions and reassured him that they had good drugs to keep him from pain. He liked that. LOL

Near the end of our talking with the nurse, when she was reassuring dad and us, my stepmom became teary eyed and this made dad also…I have to say I could have sat there bawled like a baby at that moment, but I have done what any good eldest daughter should do at times like this…I held it together. I saved my tears till I got home and could cry in the shower!

Well it’s going to be a very long day, and I am going to try to lay down for an hour or two. I’ll post when I can. I can’t thank you enough for all the sweet comments and emails. I bragged about you all to my family! You all are the best!