February 10th, 2020 was Joey's 41st birthday. We didn't do a whole lot but did manage to have a special cake made for him. His favorite is peanut butter icing so I thought a Buckeye cake with buckeyes lining it would be a win!
The girls were all about spoiling their dad and made him breakfast in bed and had many homemade cards and crafts for him to open first thing. Happy Birthday Joey! Hope you have a wonderful 41st year! We love you!
If only Joey's Birthday was thing the only thing that happened that day. My dad went into cardiac arrest at home around 8:30pm. My mom started CPR on him until the paramedics arrived. The paramedics defribulated him twice and did get his heart beating again and loaded him up and took him to the hospital. Once they arrived at the hospital he arrested again and they defribuated him twice again and agian, were able to get him back.
He was admitted to the ICU where they started the ICE procedure on him. They cool his body to 88 degrees, have him paralyzed and asleep. This is to save his organs and brain tissue and also make his heart/lungs have the least amount of workload possible.
I got word of this event on Tuesday morning and was on a flight to Ohio by that afternoon. He was very critical and I wasn't quite sure he would be alive when I got there. I arrived at the hospital about 9pm tuesday night. It's pretty hard to see your dad on a ventilator, have a central line, arterial line, catheter, unstable ekg readings and an external pacememaker firing quite often and about every med you can think of to keep him alive. Here was his iv pole.
They started warming him up just a few hours after I arrived. He behaved thrrough all of that process. He is negative for heart attack, pulmonary emobolism or any clots/stroke. Anytime some arrests and CPR is done it becomes like a head injury. The brain with out oxygen causes irreversable brain damage and you can never measure the amount or affect the persons cardiac arrest can have on brain functioning. On Thursday they removed the ventelator and Neurology was postivie about what they were seeing.
Friday my dad would not follow any commands, couldn't sit up, had involuntary movements of arms and legs and grunted a lot. He was soooo far from being my dad even though he was awake and would respond to his name. We left Friday leaving the hospital with our spirits about his recovery very low. On Saturday, we returned to the hospital and when we arrived he was in the chair, awake and asked me what I was doing there! It was such a dramatic turn around it was almost unbeliable. His short term memory was off and still continues to be but has improved since I left on Sunday. I did need to leave on Sunday, although very hard, as he was stable and Joey and the kids were all left at home.
So now its the loooong road to recovery. He has 9 broken ribs from the CPR and that is hurting him terribly, his memory continues to be off, he needs strength thereapy and OT services, he is currently on thickened liquids and pureed food as he was aspirating and we still don't know what exactly caused this, but he going for a cardiac cath soon so we can see if there is any blockages. He is still in the hospital but upon release he will be moved to a nursing home for therapy. So we are hopeful for a full recovery and his quality life can return to what it was previous to this. I am not sure when I am able to go back to Ohio as we are now starting Ella's process for her surgery.
WHEW!!!
