Random perspectives from Cleveland

Last night my dad went home and was in the shower and he blacked out. He fell on his back and hit his head. The next thing he remembers was that he woke up on his back on the bathroom floor and his towel was covered in blood. He had a 2 inch gash on the back of his head and he was throwing up (signs of a concussion.) My step-mom rushed him to the hospital and he was admitted. They did a CAT-scan and they found that he had blood on the brain.

The hospital he was at does not have a neurosurgery department, so they were going to life flight him downtown to the Cleveland Clinic. The Clinic itself had no open beds, so they sent him to a Cleveland Clinic network hospital that happened to be about 5 minutes from Lindsay's house, which is where I was at the time. The life flight helicopters weren't available though, so he went in an ambulance (about 50 minutes in the pouring rain.)

I didn't hear any of this until about 7:45 last night though, and I guess he first fell around 4:30. When he fell my step-mom wasn't home, but my brother and sister were. They heard a loud crash and went to investigate, but the bathroom door was locked. It wasn't until later when my dad stumbled out of the bathroom that they knew what was going on. They called the doctor at that time.

Anyway, back to last night. He didn't actually get to the hospital with the neuro intensive care unit until about 10:00. I got there about 10:15 and we were allowed to go see him at about 10:25. He was coherent, knew who we were, and what our relationships were, etc, which is very good. They are doing another CAT-scan at 8:30 this morning, so I'll be heading up there soon. There was only a general surgeon on duty last night, but the neuro-surgeon is there this morning. He's going to review all the stuff last night to see if they can figure out why he blacked out. Blacking out is much worse than just having slipped in the shower, since now they need to determine the cause of it so that they can correct it. The nurse last night said that the blood on the brain may just be from how severely he hit his head and that it may be re-absorbed by this morning. If it isn't, then that's much worse. Considering how much worse it could've been, he's doing very well. I'll know more soon though.