This Past Weekend - Part 1, Friday...

Friday started as most Friday's do...up about 7am, shower, shave, shampoo, shit, (no shag this time), shumshing to eat, schlepp off to the office... All was going well until Mum phoned at around 11h50, and I could hear straight away there was something not right. Turns out, my Dad had had a "mild" heart attack. What I could get out of her didn't tell me much as she was understandably weepy and distressed. I asked her if I needed to be down at the coast with them (about 6.5hrs drive) to be with them. Typically, as a colleague later put it, Mum said that it wasn't necessary. For the time being, I left it at that. At about 12h30, I phoned Mum, who had just arrived home, still in a state, for an update. At about 7am that morning, Dad had got up, done all the usual stuff and complained about a sore chest, saying that it was "worse than the night before" when it was thought to be gas, or suspected shingles. Dad had a doctor's appointment already set up for 11am, so they weren't too concerned at that time. By 8am, however, Dad said that he couldn't take the pain any more and Mum would have to take him to the doctor right then. Off they went, and once there, the doctor told him he'd suffered the "mild" heart attack, gave him a nitro tablet to melt under his tongue and immediately had him hospitalised at Port Shepstone (about 30mins from home). Mum had stayed with him right up until when she'd phoned me with the news, just after he'd told her to go home as there wasn't anything she could do except stress him out further. Stress him out? Imagine what she was going through... In between the phone calls, I'd been questioning myself about going down to be with them and had almost decided not to, due to the cost of the travel (things are tight since the build). It was at that time that I could have slapped myself for being so selfish. What if things were worse than I'd been told? What if I was putting a cost on not seeing my Dad alive again? I cursed myself and immediately told Mum that I'd be down later that day, that I would drive down, leaving the office immediately and hitting the highway after getting home to pack a few things. After letting Steph know what was up, and telling our Illustrious Leader as I was leaving the office, I went home to pack. The drive took me about six and a quarter hours, uneventful, except for thoughts running through my mind about what the future might hold and again berating myself for initially being so selfish. I arrived at Mum's at 8:50pm, about 10mins earlier than I'd expected to be there. Usually Mum greets me/us with a little wave and a smile as we drive in through the gate, but this time she didn't and I could see on her face in the glare of the headlights that she was taking strain. While I let the diesel engine run for a couple of minutes to cool the turbo down, I held Mum who started sobbing quietly, then we went inside. I poured us both a stiff single malt, sat her down and told her to tell me the whole story. Now that I was there, I could put a picture of events together and ask some questions. It appears that the doctor has told Dad that he is extremely lucky to have had this "mild" heart attack and that it was brought on by his excessive smoking (at one point, a few years ago, Dad was known to have regularly smoked 90 cigarettes on an 8-hour shift...you work out the math on that one!). Due to the smoking, he has had severe hardening of the arteries, to which the doctor has told Dad it will never get better but will get worse and will kill him if he carries on. Needless to say, Dad has vowed to quit and so has Mum. Ironically, in the week leading up to the attack, Mum and Dad had both been cutting down on their smoking with a view to quitting altogether. Anyway, Friday ended up with Mum in better spirits (she only had one drink so it wasn't that). I think it was because I was there, had spoken her through the day's events, reassured her as much as I could, and we'd put a plan of sorts to carry out on Saturday...into the hospital (visiting hours between 11am and 12pm) to see how Dad was progressing, and some retail therapy for her (even if it was only groceries). So, at around 11pm, we decided to call it a night...