Waiting for my COVID test this morning so I can be on hand during dad's angiogram and likely bypass. Really stressed about the possibility that the flu I isolated for last week was COVID and I might just be low symptomatic. (I don't have a fever now, thank god, but who knows.)

Weirdly I am far less panicked about the procedures themselves and far more worried about what happens if I can't be on hand to co-ordinate and manage the situation. Talking dad out of bad medical decisions needs a particular skill set and the people subbing in won't have it.

In unexpected curve balls, the person assigned to conduct the COVID tests has called in sick so now I have no idea what the plan is? As far as I'm aware they won't let me into the hospital without one so I dearly hope the hospital has a back up plan for this...

Update: there are blockages that will need to be dealt with, and one of them will require a stent. Everything can be done via the angioplasty. It's actually the best case scenario (outside of no heart episode) so I'm fairly relieved.

So further update: unblocking one artery has shown that part of the heart no longer had blood irritating it and there was a major block on that side of the heart. They'll have to do a viability test to see if there's anything on that side of the heart still functioning.

It's not life threatening so it's a lot less scary than it could be, but it's not great because this means dad has definitely had at least one previous heart attack that went unnoticed after the first major one ages ago. That's really worrying.

The only plus side out of this is that I got to very politely dress dad down for his insistence that this whole thing was just indigestion and my overactive imagination. Many people would not lord this over their sick father in the ICU but I absolutely did. HE KNOWS WHY.

Anyway, he came through it fine and was already complaining about having to spend two days in bed so he's well on the way to recovery. I'm not allowed in the ICU so I'm headed home to shower, eat, and sleep for a gazillion years.

I so appreciate the support. I'm shakier now that things are sort of semi-resolved so I'm going to call my sister and just breathe for a bit.