Miracle

This past summer my family went through a trial that I hope we will never have to repeat again.  A little background about my dad is he has worked hard to loose his weight, he looks great! One thing that helped him loose all of his weight was him picking up bicycling for exercise.  By June 2012 he was riding over 26 miles a day.  At the end of June he was fighting a pretty nasty cold but still insisted that he go out riding.  On the fateful day of June 29th all of our lives flipped upside down.  Craig and I were in California for a family trip with his family, my mom was taking our dog to the groomer and going to the gym and Bryson and Kate were both not home.  My dad decided to go for his bike ride that morning so that he could do other things in the afternoon; what he didn't know was that he would not be making it home to do any of that.  On the last stretch of his bike ride he was dehydrated and fatigued and he ended up collapsing on the road.  This is were the miracles began.  My dad was found by our neighbors who had left late for work and had decided to take a different road to work (the road my dad was on).  When they found my dad he was breathing but struggling to do so.  One went to go call 911 in an area that had cell phone service and the other stayed with my dad to make sure he kept breathing and in the end had to start CPR.  CPR was done on my dad for a little over 30 minutes before an ambulance arrived to get my dad to a hospital.  My dad had to be shocked twice before his heart started beating on its own.
Getting the phone call from my mom saying that dad had been in a bad accident and had possible brain damage was more than I could handle....being a nurse I think of everything that could go wrong which did not help the situation out! Phone calls kept me updated until we left California for home the next day and Craig's family was amazing and kept me afloat until we left for home.
My dad's heart sounded health and strong in the ER when he arrived but he was not responsive; they decided to admit him to the ICU and 'Freeze' him to help prevent any brain or heart damage that could still possibly take place.  He was hooked up to so many tubes and so full of fluid that he hardly looked like himself. He had a machine breathing for him and he was kept sedated.  Dad was there but not at the same time.

A few days in to being in the hospital

Dad developed compartment syndrome because of all of the fluid that was in his body with his kidneys not working so he ended up having to have a surgery on his leg to release pressure on the muscle so that he would not loose his whole leg.  This complication prevented us from being able to wake dad up sooner.  Each day I went to see him I told him about each line that he had going into him; it was funny when I would tell him about the vent that was helping him breathe; he would bite down on the tube and start grinding it with his teeth and then I would tell him that he could not do that and needed to stop...he would indeed stop.  Seeing how he responded let us all know that he could hear us even though he could not open his eyes.  

During his stay he lost his mustache....he looked so young, and a whole lot different!! We couldn't really tell what he looked like until July 4th when they were able to get him off of the vent and fully off of sedation.

I had to work the day they woke dad up but I was able to spend my lunch break with him right after he got off the vent.   I was seriously the best fourth of July ever!!  Once dad was awake the rest of the hospital stay was an adventure of healing for dad.  The pain medication made dad very silly which kept us all smiling.  Dad had to take a day to learn how to walk again because of the nasty long incision in his leg but he got an A+ with that in no time!  After the doctors knew he was okay the next step was to take a look at his heart.  In the end they placed a defibrillator in his chest (it is his own personal life saver!).  

Looking back at this whole experience we were all very very lucky!! It is rare for someone to survive after having CPR done for over 30 minutes; it is even rarer for someone to survive with no brain damage!! There was truly some divine intervention from our Father in Heaven that saved dad.  I as well as the rest of our family will always be eternally grateful that we still have dad here with us! Our testimonies have all grown and will never be the same from this experience.  I want to thank everyone, family, friends and hospital staff that supported us and helped us through this hard time! Love you all!!