How it all started...

As most of you may or may not know, this story, although scary, is one of miracles that all of your prayers and support and the work of God have made possible. With all that is going on, it's been hard for my mom to keep everyone up to date with my Dad's progress. I figured a blog would be a simple way to inform anyone who is curious about his status. My writing isn't great, and it's not intended to be an English paper, but I hope it is informative and helpful for all of you who are interested.

On November 8th, Brian (my Dad) woke up with a "sharp burning" pain going down from his Adam's apple down his chest to his legs and quickly yelled out for my mom (Leslie) to come help him. My Mom immediately went to see what was going on and soon discovered that she needed to call 911 and the ambulance came to my house to pick up my Dad. They rode to Parker Hospital and did a CAT scan, and discovered that he needed to have emergency open-heart surgery. They then proceeded to fly him to Porter Hospital where he was going to get the surgery.

In the middle of all of this is when my part comes in. I was riding the bus to class and happened to look down at my phone and see that my mom had called and texted me "Emergency, please call me!" That's when I was informed that something very serious had happened to my Dad and it was very urgent and that it was very life threatening. So I quickly hopped off of the bus and rushed down from Fort Collins to the hospital where I was in time to see my Dad before they took him into surgery. That was one of the scariest moments of my life and really made me realize that we can't take anything for granted, especially your loved ones - always remember that.

Dr. Gouber (yes, pronounced Goober), went on to explain to my Mom and me that what my Dad had is called an Aortic dissection. This, in layman’s terms is when the layers of your aorta start to seperate, and create a “blister” on the walls of your aorta. After several explanations, that was the simplest and easiest to understand. They told my mom and I several times that he could die, have a stroke, or be paralyzed. You never think you'd hear someone say that about your Dad, who you have admired and tried to resemble your whole life and always thought nothing could happen to.

There have been lots of happenings and things going on in the past few days, if anyone is curious they can ask me about it by sending me and email at jschrack@comcast.net. For the most part I'll now regualrly post little updates throughout the day about how he is feeling and what's going on. But overall, the most important thing is that he is alive and is recovering according to schedule. He should be out of the hospital sometime this weekend, and then a long road of recovery after that. I'll keep you updated as best as possible and once again, the support and love you all have given is amazing. We are truly blessed to have such good people in our lives.

For anyone, who wants to know where he is - He is at Porter Advenist Hospital in the ICU room 2228.


Thanks,
James