My dad is slowly starting to show signs of improvement. He did have a mishap with his blood pressure dropping, but they think it was caused by the Lasiks. When i left the hospital last night it was lowish but OK. His blood pressure is naturally a little lower from anemia. The only real problem that they are having is with his oxygen. Without even moving it was dropping from low 90’s to the upper 80’s. They need it to be at least 95%. I haven’t, however, been able to speak to his doctors. They always seem to be conveniently MIA when anyone’s family is around. They tell my dad, but his memory is bad and he always says he can’t remember when i ask. I need to find a way to speak to them.

When i went to see him yesterday, i found him sitting in a recliner chair, he was drinking coffee and watching television. He seemed like he was in a better mood, just really weak and tired. He’s still in CCU, but It was still nice to see him sitting there with his coffee. He almost got me in trouble the other day! Here i was spoiling him with numerous cups of coffee and he never told me he wasn’t allowed regular coffee! He’s supposed to have decaf so yesterday that’s exactly what i took him. He drank it so it must not have been that terrible.

I haven’t been sleeping. I get at the most four hours of sleep a night. I went to bed at 10pm and woke right back up at 2am. It’s now 6am and I’m wide awake. I have to find a way to stay asleep, my body feels run down and just plain tired. It’s like i have a quarter tank of gas but I’m running as if i had a full tank. Slowly it’s wearing me down more and more. Today, i have more running & things to do, i desperately need a break but in life you barely get one. Hopefully i can get a nap in today but i doubt it.

On a good note, we got a new Christmas tree It’s a white one and it’s 6.5 feet. We got bright colored bulbs (pink, blue, and green), with multi colored lights, silver garland with snowflakes, and a fiber optic angel on the top. It’s sooo pretty! It’s right in the front window for everyone to see as they drive up our street. I’m glad we went with the white tree, the bulbs really stand out on it. You should have heard our conversation over the decorations. It went something like this:

On the string of lights:

Me: Hey put in that blinker thing.
Him: OK
Me: HEY! I thought those lights said they wouldn’t go out if a bulb was missing! You took out that bulb and the whole darn thing stopped lighting.
Him: Guess they lied.

On the bulbs:

Me: Be careful with those bulbs, those things break easily.
Him: But they say they’re shatterproof.
Me: And the lights said they wouldn’t go off if a bulb was missing…
Him: *laughs* Well, yeah that’s true.

Our car is just about done at the shop. It ended up being close to $3,000 worth of damage from that drunk idiot. I hope he learned his lesson, sadly i don’t think he did, but who am i to judge. He could have killed not only himself but my husband as well. In my opinion, the only people who drink and drive are selfish people. If your gonna get plastered take a cab! If you don’t have the money for a cab, then you shouldn’t be drinking at all!

Anyway, we get our car back within the next couple of days. I’ll miss our rental It’s a 2010 Pontiac G6 and it’s AWESOME! I think we might get it for our next car! Maybe..

I’ve been down the hospital with my dad. He is now in the VA in CCU, they transported him over Wednesday. First i was told he had a heart attack, then i was told he had something like a heart attack from fluid being in his lungs, then last night the nurse said he did have a heart attack, that his platelets were high. I have no idea what the hell is going on, again they can’t get their story straight. Typical VA. I believe the other hospital, that he had a heart attack, UPMC is trust worthy the VA is not. He also does have pneumonia on top of it, we’re lucky he’s alive

The other night when i was there with him, a doctor came in and i asked her straight out, why my father was not put on lasiks when they could see that he needed them. He was swollen so bad from fluid that his feet & legs were triple the size their supposed to be. She told me it was because they didn’t know if it was from the cancer, that if it was from cancer the lasiks wouldn’t work. I asked her “Well why didn’t they find out if it was or not, they could of at least TRIED something to get the fluid out like pressure cups…” she just said she understands i am upset but she’s not his cancer doctor. The other hospital gave him lasiks and guess what?? His legs are now normal size! I know, that if he would of went to the VA they would of just said it was from pneumonia and would of never did tests, never found out he had a heart attack, and never would of given him the lasiks, leaving him to just continue to fill with fluid and that in my opinion is MEDICAL MALPRACTICE. Speaking of medical malpractice, it turns out they also messed up and had him taking to much of this one inhaler, they had him take 4 puffs twice a day, a respiratory specialist said that she’s never seen anyone take 4 puffs, that with that inhaler you can only take 2 puffs at the most! I’m just so fed up with it all, they shouldn’t even be allowed to run that hospital, apparently the doctors there have no idea what they’re doing!

Right now he is doing better , but they still can’t get his oxygen up. He’s been on 4 liters of oxygen and his oxygen level is still only at 90%, they need it to be at least 95%. I took him down Thanksgiving dinner and he ate it all. I was surprised because his mouth has been really sore from the medication he is on and he hasn’t been able to eat much. He told me they gave him special stuff to numb it so he could eat. He bragged to everyone about how good it was, I’m just glad he enjoyed it because the food there is crap (his opinion) I don’t know how long he’s gonna be in the hospital, i just want him to feel better.

When we moved into our apartment my husband and I decided we would just keep a cellphone as our home phone. Today he had to take it to work to call the insurance company about our car. Around 5pm he received a call from my sister in law informing him that my dad was in ICU. It wasn’t until i contacted my sister via my text messaging through my broad band modem that i found out what happened.

My Uncle Don was supposed to take my dad for chemo today. Usually my dad calls him in the morning to make sure he can still take him, he didn’t call this morning so my uncle called him. My dad answered with “please help me, please help me” over and over again. It turns out that my dad was on the floor unable to breath and move, he was dieing. Thank God, he was able to knock the phone off the hook to tell my uncle he needed help. My uncle called and ambulance and he was rushed to the nearest hospital. He has pneumonia and it’s really bad. What makes me extremely angry is the fact that my dad was just down the VA hospital Monday for a doctors appointment and they sent him right back home!! He is full of water, so bad that he can no longer wear shoes, when he was in the hospital for pneumonia the last time, they had him in a room with another patient!! They did not put pressure cups on his legs to get the water out, they did not give him lasiks to get the water out, they gave him a few pills and sent him on his way.. still with pneumonia! This is how they treat their Veterans! This is the thanks they get!

The hospital he is in now found three spots on his lung, the VA hospital only found one! Now you tell me how one hospital can see three but the other can only see one! It makes me sick to my stomach and very angry, that they are failing to provide my dad with the proper care when he served for his country and for their very lives. It’s disgusting, i really think my dad should fill a lawsuit against the VA for negligence, does he even have a chance though? We’re talking about going against the government here. They are killing my father by not providing him with the proper care that he needs. It is absolutely appalling.

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that if my uncle would not of called my dad, he wouldn’t be here today. I cannot wrap my head around the fact that the hospital he is in now, requires you to suit up just to see him, but the VA did not and not only did they not require a suit, they had him in a room with another patient! This is not the first time he almost died. The first time he was jaundice and had a blood count of three, the second time his pulse dropped down to thirty, and now this. I cannot sit here and know that my dad is in that house a lone with no one to take care of him. I cannot leave my dad, as sick as he is alone when he needs twenty-four hour care, so i am moving in with him to take care of him myself. I will miss my husband, i will miss my pets but more than that i could never forgive myself, if i just sat here and did nothing knowing my dad is alone in that house in his condition. He needs me, he took care of me when i was turning blue and could not breath from asthma, he put clothes on back, a roof over my head and food in my stomach. He needs me now more then ever, and no matter what i have to do, i will be there for him every single step of the way, because i love him more than life itself and he is irreplaceable. He took care of my mother while she battled breast cancer and put his cancer on a back burner, now he needs someone to take care of him.

I feel horrible that i didn’t go to the hospital to see him today, i know it may sound selfish but i couldn’t. I was so upset and so emotional that i could not calm down. The hospital he’s at, is the hospital where my mother passed away. It’s so hard, i avoid that hospital completely, for a long time i wouldn’t even drive by it. I watched my mother die, i remember what she looked like, i remember everything. I could not walk into that hospital in the state of mind i was in. I tried to get dressed to go, but i couldn’t. I called my brother and told him and he said it was OK because my daddy was sleeping, that made me feel a little better but not totally. No matter how i feel tomorrow, i have to find the strength to walk in that hospital because he needs me right now.

Please keep my dad in your thoughts and prayers.

We went and seen New Moon last night It was awesome! Even better then Twilight. We found a privately owned movie theater that hardly anyone knows about to avoid the crowds. Well to be honest, mostly everywhere was sold out so we won all ways. It was only $7 a ticket, we got 2 medium drinks and a large popcorn for $9, and there was way less people, so we got a great deal! Now i can’t wait for Eclipse to come out lol I’ll be waiting patiently

I’m so tired today, Jas kept me up all night with his extremely loud snoring. It’s so hard for me to get any sleep because i need total quiet to fall asleep. I have insomnia to begin with and add my husbands snoring and it’s a disaster. I got to bed around 5am and woke back up at 9am. I had to send him out to get me coffee and a breakfast sandwich or i wouldn’t even be functioning right now.

My brother finally called my dad after at least 13 years of not speaking to him. His wife passed away I feel so bad for him, she was so young. He’s only 41 so she must have been around that age. It’s sad, but i barely know him. My dad had him in his previous marriage and he held this grudge against my dad so he never came around. I seen him maybe 10 times in my life. It was great when i did see him though, he was funny and always really nice to me. I remember him stopping by the one year with this really cool softball card for me. He had my softball picture made into glass! I kept it in it’s box and to this day it is still in there, i was always afraid i would break it. It’s the only thing i have to remind me of him. I hope he’ll continue to call my dad, i would love to see him again.

Author: Cormac McCarthy
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (November 3, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307476308
ISBN-13: 978-0307476302

A man and his young son are on a journey south across the country in search of warmth. The world around them is burnt, all that’s left is ashes and remnants of what used to be. They are traveling along a road with nothing but what they can scavenge along the way. Food are shelter are scarce, leaving them to sleep out in the freezing cold snow with nothing but a tarp, a fire and some blankets. They have to be careful and be on the lookout at all times for lawless bands of people who want nothing but to murder them. Their only protection is a pistol with just two bullets, they have nothing but each other. Every step of the way along the road is a battle to survive.

I read The Road in one sitting, i didn’t get to sleep until well after four am. It was a very compelling novel with pure, raw, emotion. The writing was absolutely flawless making it seem real, putting down the book would be like abandoning them and i just couldn’t do it. It was scary, heart breaking, raw, disturbing, powerful, emotional and intense page after page. Here is a young boy who grew up in this world, he doesn’t know about movies, tv, soda, all he knows is horror. What was worse though, is the father, he knows the past, he knows how it used to be and has to live with the memories of a world, a life that no longer exists.

There was no break with this book, it flowed on and on with a powerful grip on the reader. You did not know their names, you did not really understand what happened but i don’t think it mattered, what mattered was surviving and that’s it. From the very first page, McCarthy, grabbed you and held you in suspense until the very last page. I would have to say that this was one of the best books i have ever read. Go out and buy it, don’t even think twice, you’ll love it i promise.

As you may already know, this novel is now a movie. It comes out very soon in theaters. Here is the trailer