She immediately started the drive and phoned her little sister. Knowing her Grand Pa’s concern and Heather’s scared voice she was alarmed and drove unmercifully. Amazingly law enforcement stopped her upon two separate occasions. Can you believe both times they let her go without citation after hearing her story? Need I say unheard of? She made the 1 1/5-hour drive in about an hour. That includes being stopped twice and going through two somewhat large cities. As to how large were these cities, they are county seats and big enough to seriously slow you down. Let me reiterate the highways were patchy with snow and ice. Unrealistic for such speedy driving.
I knew she was coming for me so I had to take a bath. What a chore that was. I could not get my breath. Every movement exhausted me. Never in all my life had I imagined bathing could be so challenging. I’d do a little scrubbing for thirty seconds and have to sit for 3 or 4 minutes and huff and puff. The same thing drying and dressing afterwards. What a relief getting back to my sofa.
When Alithea came through the front door she spoke to Heather and ask. “Where’s dad?” Then looked over and saw me lying there. Went straight to the telephone and started to dial. Kind of like all in one big motion. I ask her “What are you doing?” Her reply “Calling an ambulance”. I told her not to do that. “If you think I should go to the hospital then take me yourself. We will get there a lot faster that way rather than waiting for them to come all the way out here” as I lived 10 miles out of town.
We arrived at the local hospital and then the seriousness was reviled. In ER they connected me to all the usual equipment. The pulse-heartbeat monitor displayed my heartbeat ranging from a low of 40 beats per minute then jumping as high as 240. It constantly fluctuated back and forth and anywhere in between. Noticing Alithea watching the monitor I looked into her eyes and could see the worry and uncertainty within. So I tried to calm her. I’m no medical professional but I knew those numbers were way off and I comprehended she understood what they meant. The doctor ordered an EKG and X-rays. The X-ray was easy enough but the EKG was a different matter. Are you familiar with the little stick on sensors they put on your chest and back? They stick maybe 6 or so on with wire cables going to the EKG machine. Well the EKG did not yield believable results. As a consequence their assumption was they had a bad shipment of sensors. The end result of that was they kept putting them on and ripping them off, put em on and rip em off and again put em on and ripped them off over and over. Then started changing the cables from the sensors to the machine. And the stickers too! Then even changed the EKG machine. Again using new cables and stickers. A couple of nurses felt sorry for me and apologized for pulling so much hair off my chest. But I felt so bad I didn’t care and anyway I am glad I felt so ill, had I been of sound mind that would have hurt!
So what was the reason for the EKG problems? In simple terms, my poor heart was as sick as the rest of me, beating very erratically. The hospital staff did an excellent job.
They told us they were going to send me out to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio. But this would take a while to arrange. So while waiting Alithea took Heather down the road a couple of blocks to a restaurant because she had eaten very little that day. While they were out the hospital had a change of plan. Heather told me a few weeks afterward that the hospital had been trying to transport me via Care Flight helicopter but it was in use on another call.
When they returned from the restaurant both girls nearly panicked. They walked over to the Emergency Room area where I had been and opened the curtain, they were shocked and Heather started crying. The bed was empty! One of the nurses promptly told them “Don’t worry. Your Dad is