At 4:00pm he was out but by 5:00pm he still wasn't stable. His heart wouldn't maintain a steady beat and his blood wouldn't coagulate.
By 8:00pm they were working on him and wouldn't let the family in to see him.
At 10:00pm they were using the paddles for a third time but he wasn't responding. Currently they are in a full code blue (I don't even really know what that means except that in hospital shows it's really bad) but I think it's complete heart failure. He's already had two other triple or quadruple bypasses in the last few years. Susan says they did 6 bypasses this time (is that even possible?) and reconstructed a valve.
He's also got an old surgical scar that runs straight down the centre of his chin. That's from when they split his face open to remove a tumor the size of a baseball from his throat back in the 90s. Seriously, it was huge - when you looked in his mouth, it looked exactly like a baby was crowning and about to be born. Basically, this guy is a survivor. I can't imagine him losing this fight.
He's actually my mom's cousin so he's about 74 years or thereabouts but he's ageless. Intelligent and funny, he's a bull of a man who ran his farm on his own up until a couple of months ago when he and his equally dynamic wife, Isabel, finally decided to move into town. He's written a number of books, had a regular column in their local paper and was minister of tourism for the Saskatchewan Legislature. Well-travelled and educated, they lived in Hong Kong throughout his cabinet posting, raised their younger kids over there before returning to Wolsely to continue his political career locally and take care of the farm. I can't imagine not being able to pick up the phone and call him so we can discuss Canadian politics and laugh at my 80 year old uncle Max with his steady stream of 30 & 40-something girlfriends.
I will wait.
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