Friday, January 9, 2009

Buddy Collins (Lee's Dad....aka Papa)

I would ask everyone that reads this to please pray for our family. Early yesterday morning, Lee's dad was taken to the ER for chest pains. Turns out, he had a heart attack! They took him straight to the cath lab and did a heart cath. He had one artery that was completely blocked and they had to put three stents in, all in the same vessel. The bottom of his heart was damaged, to what extent we won't know for a while. He is now in Cardiac Intensive Care Unit or CICU. He had a rough day yesterday with low blood pressure and pain. He's not used to taking pain medicine so he has been sedated a lot with the medicines. He had a fair amount of internal bleeding last night and they had to give him a unit of blood. CC went home about 6:30 last night as no overnight visitors are allowed in that unit. I went to see him this morning. He had had some Ativan for agitation about 6am (we got there before 8) and we could not wake him up. That had him zonked. We tried and tried to get him awake, but no luck. His day nurse gave him a medicine to reverse the Ativan and Papa woke right up. He knew who we all were and was talking and asking about different family members. He still has quite a bit of pain and they gave him a half of a pain pill which knocked him out again! I stayed until the doctor came by about lunch time. He said there was damage to his heart, but hopefully it wouldn't be noticeable. If we can just get his pain under control and also keep him awake at the same time. I asked the doc if we could do a fourth of a pain pill or even just some Tylenol which makes him drowsy at home. He said that was fine. His blood pressure is still low and he is on a Dopamine drip (for all my nurse friends) currently. We are going to try to wean him off of this and the oxygen. If we can get blood pressure up, pain down, and oxygen gone....he could go home as soon as tomorrow. If there are still some issues and he's not better then he will stay a while longer. But it was good news from the doctor. Please keep us all in your prayers, but especially our Papa!

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