Are you freakin' kidding me?

Hmm... I think I should change the title of my BLOG to the title of this post! It's how I feel lately about pretty much everything. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm a pretty positive person but.... I do have a severe intolerance to stupidity, mediocrity and ignorance and unfortunately... the world is full of all of these things! So lately... I've been having a severe allergic reaction to alot of things around me which results in me proclaiming... "ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME? NO SERIOUSLY???"

Apparently, my dad (who is 54 years old) has been complaining of chest pain for over a week. My mom has been way busy and hasn't had time to really see how much he's hurting and my dad is frankly SICK OF THE EMERGENCY ROOM!! The first time he finally went to the hospital for chest pain he had a quin bypass, then 3 months later he has a HEART ATTACK and ends up with 3 stents. In the first instance he did not have an actual heart attack but in the second he did, which resulted in cardiac tissue damage. The heart attack was caused BY 3 of the bypasses FAILING so they went in and stented the ORIGINAL arteries. (MY translation??? HE DIDN'T NEED THE BYPASS!!! THEY SHOULD HAVE STENTED HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!) I mean SERIOUSLY, why go to EXTREME measures like... I don't know... open heart surgery... without at least attempting something much less invasive like angioplasty and stent placement? UGH!!! Okay so a little while later he had more chest pain which ended up with a diagnosis of reflux. After that he decided he is just suffering from paranoia so he doesn't want to go to the hospital.

He also COMPLETELY changed his eating habits. He eats almost NO saturated fat and exercises more than I do which is saying A LOT!! (I'm at the gym 6 days a week!)

So yesterday I'm at my mom's and my dad is talking like he thinks he is going to die soon. He's complaining of chest pain still and my mom, is asking him if he needs to go to the hospital. I'm like YES!!! Take him!!! So he takes a nitro pill and they take him to the hospital where the EKG and bloodwork come back normal. This time though, they are able to rule out reflux and his cardiologist is NOT comfortable with assuming everything is okay and insists on doing "more tests". HOORAY!!! GO DR. FRIESNICHT!! So he does ANOTHER angio and finds.... (drum roll....) a STENT HAS COLLAPSED!! Are you freakin' kidding me? What the H. E. double hockey sticks is up with that? So they re-stented his right coronary artery and now he is just hanging out in the hospital. Hopefully he will be home later today.

I finally googled stent info and found that stents are little mesh wire tube like things that are inserted via a small catheter that gains access into the heart from the femoral artery. (I already knew this but I didn't know what MATERIAL the stent was made of.) I can't for the life of me figure out how this tube could collapse. I can't find any information on the likelihood of that happening.

It's so hard to think that my dad's heart would fail him again EVEN when he is working so hard to be good to it. The likelihood of the bypass failing was VERY low and still 3 of the bypasses collapsed. I'm sure the likelihood of the stent collapsing was equally as small and STILL it happened. The likelihood of him dieing at a ripe old age from being old is VERY SMALL... but hey... my dad does everything else different from the norm... so here's to AT LEAST 30 more years of having my dad around. I LOVE MY DAD!!!

UPDATE: My dad just called and told me his Dr. said the collapse was caused by a build up of scar tissue around the stent.... go figure!