Day "Zero"

Dad was doing something he really enjoyed: mowing. He is always one to work hard and diligently, and this day was like many other days he had encountered.

He had been mowing about an hour and a half, and Mom was keeping an eye on him. She noticed he had put the mower away and was milling about. So she decided to step out and encourage him to take a break for the morning.

Once she got outside, she found him collapsed by the side of his pickup truck lying on his right side. Dad has been known to lie down when he gets winded or "overdoes" it as Mom would say, but she realized it was something else when he really didn't respond.

I would have to let Mom and/or Skeeter fill in any additional details here, but the neighbor across the street happened to see Dad sway a bit next to the truck before collapsing. At this stage, everyone felt it was heat exhaustion, but even as first responders arrived at the scene, they needed to be sure it was not related to the heart or something like an aneurysm. Dad was disoriented and confused.

When one of the EMTs asked Dad if he knew what his name was, Skeeter leaned over to the ambulance driver and commented, "If he says 'George Bush,' he's not delirious. That's really the truth!"

(Ed. Note ... along the way during this blog, we may include some comments that are funny in nature, and this is not to minimize what is happening. It's just part of everyone's healing process, and we identify with both the difficult and the humorous aspects of our journey.)

Mom noticed he had a pretty good knot on the back righthand side of his head, along with some abrasion from the concrete driveway, so she alerted the responder team. They loaded him up on the ambulance and made their way to St. Mary's Hospital in Athens with Skeeter following closely behind. I got word from Skeeter what was going on, and immediately left work to drive over to Athens.

I won't go into much detail regarding the ER, but to say that Dad had some attempts at getting his CT scans completed to determine what was happening inside his head. Our attending neurosurgeon was Dr. David Semenoff, and he eventually stopped by to talk with us. His initial prognosis was scarier than just heat exhaustion and a bump on the head.

Basically, he told us that Dad had suffered a traumatic brain injury, or TBI. When he fell and hit the back of his head, the brain "rebounded" toward the opposite side of the skull, affecting the right frontal lobe. Blood was pooling in this area, along with minor spots scattered elsewhere. The next three to four days would be critical to watch for swelling and to see how he responded. They would conduct regular CT scans to monitor the injury. Dr. Semenoff is very kind, but also very experienced, and he was open and honest. Injuries like this covered the spectrum, resulting in anything from a fantastic recovery or death and all spots in between.

So we began praying for the best as they prepared to admit him into the ICU. He would be on fluids and medication to keep his blood pressure (and any resulting pressure in his skull) low. They would regularly wake him up to check and see that he was responsive, asking him a set of questions and offering up simple commands such as wiggling his toes or sticking his tongue out. He knew who he was, and he recognized all of us and could name us. He knew his complete phone number, his birthday, but was confused on the actual date and year. On this day (which we call Day 0), he thought the year was 1987.

They gave him some morphine in his IV drip to help with the pain, and as many TBI patients do, he drifted in and out of sleep.

The hospital is already experiencing the "George Bush" phenomenon ... when I stopped by the Information Desk to find out where Dad was located, I asked about locating a patient. The volunteer turned to his computer monitor and asked, "What's the last name?" I replied, "Bush." He typed that in, scanned the results, and his eyes got really big when he asked back, "George Bush??" I grinned and said, "That would be correct." And he sent me on my way, laughing with his other volunteers at the prospect of having George Bush in their hospital.

Skeeter and I were tagged as the "Bush Brothers" by the ICU staff, where they asked us if we had the recipe for the baked beans and if we had Duke with us. For those of you who don't know, there is a brand of baked beans using our last name. =8^]