Surreal

So, here I am in Miami and what a surreal week it's been. I drove down here to visit with family and friends since I had all this unexpected extra time to make use of. Thirteen (13) looong hours on the road. And for those of you who know, reaching Florida is almost the worst part. Once you hit the border, there's still five (5!) hours of boredom to go before you actually reach Miami. It's torture!

But, I'm getting distracted. What's made this such a strange week is that as soon as I walked into the door at my sister's home last Sunday, she told me that my dad in Jamaica had had a heart attack the previous night and was in the hospital, status unknown. I've never been so scared. There was no time to indulge though. I had to go straight into numb, problem-solving mode. While my sister worked the phones to figure out who knew what, we also immediately went online to find her flight down to JA that night. I spent the rest of the week taking care of her 2 kids (a great distraction) while she shuttled back and forth between Mandeville and Kingston, talking to and haranguing doctors and paying for procedures. Thank goodness she's a medical professional and up on all of this stuff.

To make a long story short, my dad is stable. He just came home from the hospital yesterday. His cardiac cath showed a blockage, but unlike in the U.S., the cardiologists there are holding off on doing an angioplasty while they observe him. In the meantime, my sister and I are looking into possibly bringing him here to the U.S. to get the angio done. Daddy is at home working on minimizing the seriousness of all this and being (almost) as stubborn as ever! :-)

What a blessing in disguise it was that my work permit was delayed! What if I'd already been in Ireland when I heard about this? Think how horrible that would have been. It was hard enough being the one who stayed "at home" and waited to hear updates :-( Being so much farther away and trying to start a new life while being weighted down by worry would have been insupportable!