tuesday

Two weeks before my dad went to the hospital, he just had a cold. We all did. But ours went away after a few days, and we all started to feel better. But Dad didn't. I just thought that because he was older, it was taking him longer to get better.

He had been having a lot of nosebleeds that I was concerned about, and I told him to go to the doctor about it about a month before his death. But the doctor said she had no idea why his nose was bleeding so much.

In the week before he died, Dad wasn't getting out of bed. He had no appetite. Our fridge was full of uneaten food. I brought him glasses of water, but I don't know if he drank them or not. That's when I knew something was wrong. This was not normal. With the combined efforts of my uncle, aunt, and me, we convinced my dad to go to the doctor again. This doctor ran a few tests and sent him home. Dad went back to bed and said we had to wait until the next day when the blood test results came in. I was really scared; I was expecting it to be something serious, but not immediately life threatening. Dad and I actually argued that morning (Tuesday) because he said that his appointment was at 11, but I KNEW that the receptionist said 10. We argued about it for a few minutes, and he called back and found that I was right. Dad was loopy though. He couldn't think straight.

The doctor called us about 6 PM that evening. We were just sitting down to have dinner, and she said that Dad's blood test results hadn't come in yet, but the tests that had come through were all wrong. His liver enzymes and his blood counts were all off. It was actually nothing new for Dad's blood cell count to be off. Several years prior, he had gone to several specialists because his white blood cell count was low. They couldn't find anything wrong with him at the time. But this time, doc said we had better take him to the ER. So I finished my dinner and, then, knocked on Dad's door to tell him to get ready. He whined like a toddler,

"Right noooow?! Whyyyy?!"
"Well, Dad, we can either go tonight, or we can wait until tomorrow. Either way, we are going, and we might as well go tonight so maybe you can feel better sooner."

He gave in, and we dropped off Blake at my aunt's house and headed to LGH. Dad was really dizzy. When they showed him his information on his bracelet, Quang M. Bui, he said that the W is supposed to be an M. He also kept standing up whenever they called a number because he thought it was our number. It wasn't even close. They would call 33, but our number was 102. Something like that.

Once we got called back, Dad kept asking how long he would be there because he was worried about Blake and TJ getting home because he had to work the next day. I really wanted to stay until they admitted him, but we had no idea how long it would be, The ER doc told me that it looked like liver disease, which is what we were expecting it to be. As shocking as it all should have been to hear that my dad might have liver disease, I wasn't all that surprised because my dad had been a heavy drinker for quite some time. And like I said earlier, I was expecting it to be a semi-serious issue.

I was not too emotional about everything because I was in problem solving mode. Everything was reactionary to me, and I just kept thinking what do I need to do next? But the one thing I did get emotional about was the fact that I couldn't donate my liver to my dad because I was pregnant. You see, I was assuming that the next day, we would go to the hospital to visit my dad and hear that he would need a transplant. That's the serious news I was expecting to hear. And I was expecting that it would be fixable. It was really hard for me to think that, perhaps, my liver was compatible, but my pregnancy prevented my donation.

I went home that night expecting that I would wake up in the morning and visit Dad and hear how many days they would want to keep him in the hospital. That's what we all expected.