Milagro

Post by J

The last few weeks have been challenging. Not only am I learning a language from absolute zero (okay, I guess I did know how to count to 10 when I started), I received yet more bad news from home about a week after my uncle passed away.

My older brother called on Wednesday night (November 12) around 7:00. As soon as I saw the caller ID, I knew something serious had happened, because my brother never calls me. This is what he said:

My dad has had a bad cough for a few months. He's gone to the doctor at least three times because of it, primarily because he coughs so hard he loses oxygen and passes out. The doctor, unfortunately, did not seem too concerned. He listened to Dad's lungs.  An x-ray was taken. The doctor did not find anything unusual, so basically dismissed my dad and his complaint.

On November 12, Dad started coughing. He decided to stand over a trashcan and spit out whatever resulted from his coughing attack. The coughing became severe and my dad passed out. And fell. On his neck.

He regained consciousness and was in a lot of pain. He decided to try and tough it out and crawled to his chair where he thought the pain would ease. It didn't. Fifteen minutes later, he called my brother's girlfriend and asked her to take him to the hospital.

"Hang on," I interrupted my brother. "Shouldn't he have called an ambulance?"

"He said he didn't want the expense of an ambulance," was my brother's reply.

So, after an excruciating ride to the emergency room, the ER doctor ordered x-rays. One look and my dad was life-flighted to Denver. So much for saving the expense of an ambulance ride.

After more tests and an MRI, Dad went into surgery on Thursday morning. The surgery took hours, and my sister and younger brother and I were pretty much in the dark the entire time because HIPAA prevented the hospital staff from speaking to anyone but my older brother. And they weren't giving my older brother much information, either.

As a result of the surgery, my dad has two fused vertebrae and two wounds, one in the front and one in the back of his neck - a testament to the extent of the surgery. Amazingly, after only a few days, he was released from the hospital on Sunday, November 16. He is in a neck brace and is expected to make a full recovery.

The surgeon said he couldn't believe Dad had walked to the car and had been driven to the hospital without sustaining further injury. He also said that Dad missed being paralyzed by a millimeter.

Milagro is the Spanish word for miracle.

Me and Dad, August 2014.