Surgery, Diabetes, Vomiting -- Oh My!

I still owe you funny, clever stories about The Snake's reaction to the news, but thought I'd just update on all that has happened the last week. Thanks again for all the good wishes for my dad.

Last Wednesday my dad had his chest ripped open and four arteries grafted to his heart to improve the blood flow to his muscle. He was highly tolerant to the pain meds and it took them an extra hour to get him settled in his bed post-op. But he came off the ventilator by that evening and most of his time in the hospital was unremarkable. Oh, except for the little diabetes that seems to have reared its ugly head.

My dad has a sweet tooth. And he indulges it. However, his routine blood work has never necessitated any further investigation into a diabetes diagnosis, although his fasting sugar is at the high end of the normal range. His younger brother has battled the disease for a number of years. So this event has been a little tough for him. He has been discharged on 2 oral medications for diabetes, as well as a long-acting insulin shot once a day. He checks his sugar 4-5 times a day at this point to track how things are going. The doctors say the condition may not be permanent or at least may improve, but they can't be certain. It may have been kicked off by the intense trauma/stress to his body from the surgery.

So I stayed back in Pennsylvania until he came home from the hospital, to help my mom and brother (who lives with them) get him settled. My folks have been pretty healthy so aren't hugely medically savvy and dealing with all the heart meds and diabetes meds and monitoring was pretty overwhelming. But things quickly got settled, and I finally had to get back to return The Snake to school and be sure Resident Boy had not completely demolished the house.

Of course I arrived home to dog poop in the basement, pee on the rug, dog hair all over everything, and no food in the house. It wasn't the dog's fault -- Resident Boy didn't pick up her prescription diet and she got sick. And I have a week to clean it up, work on the taxes, organize a bunch of things, go to 2 doctors appointments and prepare to leave again for another week. We are heading out west to scope out neighborhoods in LA (The Snake will stay with his other grandparents in AZ).

Oh, and did I mention that the advent of the 2nd trimester brought along puking? Only a couple of times, but now I have these occasional waves of full-on, intense nausea. And the fatigue -- oy vey. I'm happy, absolutely. But I just don't know how everything is going to get done. And it is SO much colder here! I just want to curl up under the covers and sleep, which I did this afternoon.

This turned into a rant, huh? Well, I wish that I'd gotten a few more things done today, but I'm trying to remember that gestating 2 babies is tough work. And my primary job. But its hard when I can't see or feel them and just feel wrecked.

I did finally catch up on all my blogs tucked away in my reader! So while I didn't comment much, I know what you all have been up to, for the most part. I'd missed my daily check-ins! More fun and interesting things to follow, while I'm resting between loads of laundry.