I received the following email from my mom this morning. My dad is in the hospital. I will try to update everyone as best I can via my blog. Here is her email:
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Hi Everyone,
It is 5:30 a.m. Daddy and I have had a very long night. I will start at the beginning: Sat. evening at about 9:00 p.m. We drove over to the church to print off the programs for Sunday. Daddy had done some pushups a little earlier in the evening and he felt a little pain in his chest...nothing much at all. We finished up in the library and headed home. We got about halfway home and he said his back just all of a sudden started hurting really badly. He pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car and fell on his knees on the grass by the side of the road. It took all we had to get him in the car and drive him the rest of the way home. When we got home he was in excruciating pain. I had to move his legs out of the car and then he fell down and couldn't get up or get in the house. He just laid on the driveway. I called 911. The ambulance came. He felt one pinch better when they got him in bed. He was as white as a sheet. They checked his vital signs and everything seemed o.k. but he just said that his back hurt really badly (a little below the shoulder blades). They did an EKG and that seemed normal. He seemed to be doing a little better and they said to call if he seemed to get worse. After doing all they could, they left. Well, he had to go to the bathroom and that ended up putting him in excruciating pain again. He said his legs were going numb. 911 got another call. They gave him morphine for the pain.
They took him to American Fork Hospital where they did a CT scan and found that he had a torn aorta. They started giving him statins like crazy to lower his blood pressure and more morphine. Then they transported him by ambulance to St. Mark's Hospital in S.L. I followed doing 85 mph.
I got him checked in and then they made me wait in a waiting room until they would come and get me. All of a sudden I heard that there was a code blue in room 14 (his room) people came rushing in...about 15 in all. All this time I wasn't allowed to go in the room. After a while a religious advisor came in with a "you poor thing" look on her face. She said, "Your husband has taken a turn for the worse." Then I knew that code blue meant full cardiac arrest and my first thought was..."they caused this by all the statins they gave him!"
She just sat there looking at me with great empathy. I finally said, "Is he dead?" "Oh, no, she said but he went in to full cardiac arrest and they are working on him. I said, "Oh good, because I believe he will be o.k." (The elders had given him a blessing that he would be able to bear the pain that he would go through and that he could get the help that he needed and that it would be temporary). She tried to comfort me but , honestly, I said, "Really, I'm fine." (which I really was except that I kind of felt weak and shaky).
After a while, Dr. Thorne, the cardiac surgeon came out and said, "Your husband is fine but he went into cardiac arrest from all the statins that they were giving him to lower his blood pressure." He then explained to me that the tear in his aorta (which I thought was just that, a little tear, the proper word is "dissection") actually starts in the left side of his aorta and goes all the way down to his left leg! Holy cow!
To make a long story a little shorter, he will be in the hospital for 4 to 5 days. They will treat his condition with blood pressure medication (which probably would have prevented this if we would have done something about his high blood pressure earlier). At this point, they don't plan to operate and repair the dissection with mesh..the plan is to see how he does unless he gets worse and just treat it with medication and rest.
I know I don't need to say that we need your prayers for him.
love,
Mom
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