Friends, Thank you so much for praying for Dad.
He continues to be hospitalized at Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Festus, Missouri. He will receive a pacemaker for his heart on Thursday. Mom and Dad, and some of our other family, were headed to Tennessee a few days ago to watch the Iowa State Cyclones in the Liberty Bowl. They stayed overnight in a Missouri hotel on the way down to Tennessee. That night, Dad had a fainting spell. He has been having dizzy spells with more regularity over the last few weeks. But this one ended up with him falling in the hotel room. His head got pretty banged up in the fall.
Dad spent a while in the ER, and then the doctors sent him to ICU after an EKG pinpointed more problems with his heart. We are so grateful that these doctors have found the problem, and that it has a solution.
The human body is such a delicate thing, isn’t it? And sometimes, I forget that Dad is mortal. To me, he will always be the big man with long strides who would hold my hand all the way to the church. Every night, he’d carry me up the stairs to bed, “like a sack of potatoes.” He would come home from the Co-op with that double-circle embroidered on his work shirt, then shoot hoops with me on the driveway. And now, in later years, we enjoy having Dad here helping us on the farm, and we love getting “flippity” (our word for silly) while walleye fishing on Minnesota lakes. We look forward to making more memories, after he recovers.
It’s moments like these, where I’m inclined to get a bit sentimental. Dad is going to be okay. But these brushes with our mortality help all of us remember how precious life is. Thank you, God, for this indescribable gift …
(And I guess I’ll always feel like Dad is something bigger than life, even when he’s hooked up to IV lines in a hospital room.)
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