Heart of Hearts

My father recently suffered a heart attack! TO be precise he had two, all within days of each other. The funny thing is (it's not really that funny!) that there were no symptoms as portrayed on TV and the movies (you know - the clutching of the left arm, stumbling forward endlessly, moaning and eventually dropping unconcious to the floor) which is what you would expect. My dad's heart attack created symptoms of breathlessness, discomfort/pain in the chest and tummy area, bloatedness everywhere. As the symptoms were very similar to his previous attack of gall stones falling into his pancreas - we naturally thought of the usual suspect as described above or a case of terrible food poisoning. So did he.

My father has a bit (that's a major understatement) of distrust and fear of western doctors and their medicine. He would rather seek eastern cures or pursue a course of endurance for pain. This is what we call STUBBORNESS in my family. Refusal to listen to anybody's reason till it gets nearly too late. And nearly too late it was.

When all this occurred, my sweet mom and myself were out of the country. We were alerted to the initial symptoms by my bro. He kindly informed us via sms of dad's condition. As mentioned we tot of the usual suspects. My mom was highly concerned at this point in time that it might be the more serious suspect of gall stones and wanted to return posthaste. I reasoned with her that it might just be a tummy ache and that my sister and bro who was in town would be able to handle the situation if any was to arise. Both were immediately commissioned into dad patrol duties till my mom's return. In the interim, my dad had gone to visit a Chinese Sinseh who prescibe a drugs for tummy gas (hmmm.....i shall refrain from any sarcasm here!)

Upon her return home, she found my dad in a worse state than he reported. Within two days of her return and upon the consistent urging and nagging of all family members (as well as insurmountable pain) - my dad agreed to finally go to the hospital! There, he was diagnosed as having suffered a heart attack and was asked to go for an angiogram to determine how bad the condition was. I guess the stress of going for any invasion procedure will give most people heart palpitations...it was (i believe) due to this that he suffered his second heart attack just prior to the procedure. All this time, i was in KL anxiously awaiting news of the situation and deciding when to go down. Due to the second attack the procedure was postponed till a later time (the next day)

SO tomorrow rolls round faster than i care for it and the results are not good! It appeared that his heart is only functioning at 35% capacity (that's really bad) and that his three major arteries are clogged up to 90%. The doctors advise an emergency by pass surgery to be done stating that the failure to do so would see my father alive for a very very short period of time.

At this point - there was a lot of hassle with the hospitals. He was diagnosed in one and would need to be sent to a different one for the said surgery however my mother would prefer if his surgery could be done at the hospital of her previous employment. This lead to the doctor in the first hospital being difficult (they would lose the income if the surgery was done elsewhere) in his report which created issues with my dad's transfer from their hospital to the hospital of our choice...eventually with pressure from above all was sorted out (but not without first stressing all my family with this utter nonsense! I'm absolutely fuming!!)

Even during the transfer, the first hospital managed to get it all wrong and sent my dad to a different hospital other than the one already specified. When they finally did manage to get him to the right hospital they sent him to the wrong department! Eventually they got him right where we wanted him - where all the surgeons were waiting for him! We did not find out about this till my dad came out of his drug induced state after the bypass!! Will horrors never cease? Throughout their transporting blunder they had forgotten to hook my dad up to the necessary monitors/equipment during the transportation!! All within our family has promised a swift and debiltating recourse for the first hospital!

Once he got in - the prepped him for the surgery and wheeled him in...at this time i am already on my way down in a bus (as luck would have it - there were no flights available and the buses were all full and i almost did not make my bus due to heavy traffic in town! BUT I DID! AND I PRAYED THAT MY GOOD LUCK WOULD MAKE ITS WAY TO MY DAD!) when my sister call me and she is in tears and unable to speak...she passes the phone to my bro who is also in tears...please remember that i am updated when they call me...and i tot this call with the tears was all bad news....till they told me that they were just worried, sad that it may be the last time they see him...What a RELIEF!! He had gone into surgery and they were upset that they would never see him alive again! By the time i arrived, my dad was still in surgery and we waited for him to come out each deeply in our own private prayers for his life and health.

when he did come out of surgery, he was pale but the doctors said that his surgery went well and we will know exactly how well in the days and weeks to follow.It has know been almost eight months since this event and he is breathing easier, walking better (although still much slower than before), his appetite has returned even his strange sense of humour and obscure point of views (that usually really confuses me whenever i am in any kind of discussion with him). Everyday that he lives to breathe, nag, scold, muse aimlessly, confuse me plenty... i am grateful and happy. He is my dad, my only dad - unique, larger than life and i will love him forever and ever in my heart of hearts - patched up heart and all.