Please Pray for Us.

Hey, first post of the year and it's February. I'm writing this post with a bit of urgency on my heart. Four years ago, we discovered my father had suffered a mild heart attack coupled with kidney failure. It was a distressing time and a whole new culture to understand, for our family; catheters, visiting hours, blood pressure, ICU, etc. Since then our family, especially my mom and dad, have had a rough go at it. Kidney failure means one does not have the ability to clean out ones blood from all the toxins we accumulate through food, air, liquids, etc. These accumulated toxins ends up in our urine. So this cleaning process has to be done artificially, which the medical term is called dialysis. The past four years, my dad has gone into the hospital, three days a week, sits connected to a machine for 3 to 4 hours, and gets his blood cleaned. It's been an excruciating experience for us, but especially him and my mom. He's been restricted to his local hospital and has lost much of his freedom. On Wednesday of this past week, he was called in my Columbia Presbyterian Hospital to come for blood work for a possible kidney transplant. Talk about prayers being answered. The thing is, my dad has gone into Columbia Presbyterian four other times, to get blood work done for a kidney transplant and each time after undergoing some blood work, my parents left the hospital without hearing a response from the hospital. Well on Wednesday, after the blood work, they asked my dad to get admitted into the hospital. They confirmed that his transplant would take place at midnight, the following day. They then postponed the surgery to 5am that morning (Thursday). He went in at 4am to get prepped and at 10:30am, as my mom and I were nodding off in the waiting room, the surgeon walked in and told us that the surgery was a success! We were so relieved. They brought him out of the Intensive Care Unit and back to his room. As Thursday progressed, the doctors realized that my dad wasn't urinating as much as he should have. So after some more tests, they realized that his ureter was being blocked. They decided to go back into my dad that evening (Thursday, 9pm) and remedy the problem. Now, that surgery was also a success! The blockage was removed and he would urinate properly. When my dad awoke, he complained of having immense trouble breathing. Now, having had two previous heart-attacks, it's absolutely imperative for a heart-attack victim to have regular, healthy lung capacity. If not, this stress could cause another heart-attack and further damage the heart and possibly lead to a loss of life. So the doctors sedated my dad and connected to a breathing machine (ventilator). At first, the machine was doing all the work, 100% of the breathing. Also, the doctors were not sure why he's having trouble breathing. It can be three possibilities, as of 12pm Friday. 1.) My dad has had an allergic type reaction to his bod transfusion during the second procedure. The doctors said he did lose a lot of blood the second time round. 2.) My dad has liquids in his lungs from the second procedure. During the second procedure, his Blood Pressure dropped quite a bit so, they gave him liquids to offset the low Blood Pressure and they say that it's possible that the liquids got into his lungs, causing his stressful breathing. 3.) Every transplant patient receives a type of medication after their surgery. Its known that this medication has a lot of side-effects and the doctors also think that could've caused the labored breathing. So what now? The doctors are just waiting. They're hoping that time will remedy my dad's condition. Yesterday afternoon, my dad was urinating well (the new kidney is working) and where once the ventilator was doing 100% of the breathing, my dad was breathing 50% on his own. Two great signs! He's not out of the woods yet, but he's slowly recovering.
So now, i just ask you to lift up my dad and our family in your prayers. We need as much support as we can get. If you'd like to call me my stateside number is 203-889-6885. The family went home last night, to get some much needed rest. We're heading back to the hospital in the morning. Thank you again. I love you all.