Trip to the ER -but back home safe

Well today ended up being a bit stressful, but we all stayed calm and at the days end, all is well again. The past 2 days dad has not quite been his full jolly self. He was having periods of head pain, and vision blurring. He also was having some nausea issues again. After lunch today, he just didn't look or feel right - and when he told me he felt similar to the way he did the months leading up to his stroke - I decided to take his blood pressure. . . and sure enough it was getting much higher (169/106). So we made some calls to his doctor and home health nurse and determined that with these symptoms and his history of stroke and his Afib heart condition - there was no time to "wait it out". . . we called 911 and ordered an ambulance. Dad was a bit emotional about the whole trip, and didn't want to go, but at the end of the day he thanked us for making him feel better. They did all the necessary work ups in the ER - CT scans, xrays, EKG, MRI and everything looked okay. So they did some blood work and found that his INR (which determines the thickness of his blood) was very low resulting in a much "thicker" blood. This causes his heart to stress a bit more because of his Afibrilation (irregular heartbeat). Thus, his blood pressure got higher and his head starting hurting and he started feeling those pre-stroke symptoms. After about 5 hours of evaluation, dad's BP returned to a better reading, his head felt better after some tylenol and he began to feel better from some nausea medication. We are adjusting his blood thinning meds to help get his INR back to where it should be and he should be just fine. When I left there this evening, he and mom and my brother Tommy were laughing and he was waving bye to me thru the window.

So, we made the right call. We caught things before they got out of hand and dad is a happy man tonight. You know I have to say as I was sitting in the ER with him this afternoon - I felt such peace and I just felt very strongly that God was being proactive with dad today - and he came to our rescue before anything serious occurred. I was thinking to myself - just because something bad is happening to you - it doesn't mean that something good isn't wrapped around it - i mean. . . yeah, it was stressful and bit worrisome when we were right in the middle of the whole situation, but yet God was working all along thru it all... if we had waited, who knows what tomorrow would have looked like. . . so thank you again to our awesome God who knows what we need and when we need it and will do anything to get our attention to make it happen! Just like mom's last fainting episode. . . if she hadn't had that, we might have waited too long for her surgery and she might not have had such an awesome outcome. . . now she is just an amazingly beautiful site (and my dad tells her that everyday)!

We'll follow up with blood tests, doctors visit and further evaluation, but for now. . . all is good!