Grandpa Update 8/26/2013

For those of you who are friends with my family who have been praying for my Grandpa:

So it has been a crazy roller coaster and we pretty much witnessed a miracle. Last Monday night, my Grandpa was at his very lowest. Basically, his body was declining and vitals failing and the doctors told my Mom and Grandma that unless they increased medical intervention, Grandpa wouldn't make it. Grandma knew my Grandpa wouldn't want to live helplessly with no improvement and so they had basically decided that it was about the time to release him to hospice and bring him home to Yoakum for his last days. Tuesday morning, my uncles and Grandma went in to meet with hospice and they walked into my Grandpa's room and he was basically sitting up, waved at them, and said "hey guys, great to see y'all!" Whoa! He had been basically unconscious for 6 days, not recognizing anyone or having any mental cognition. Tuesday he knew everyone by name and he asked about everyone who wasn't there...he has 3 kids, 3 kid in laws, 10 grandkids, and 9 great grandkids! Everyone was cautiously optimistic as we'd heard of people having one good day before the end. The next day came and he had improved even more and so on and so on. My mom said its been the craziest thing she's ever seen in her life. He was basically dead and then life came back into him overnight. My family is claiming a miracle!

Grandpa told us over and over that he told God he was ready to go home. Grandpa is a Christian and we all have 100% confidence of where he was going, but he said that God just let him know it wasn't quite time yet. He's 86! So its hard to know how to see all this as he's lived a wonderful, full life. The doctors said they wanted to do an angiogram to determine what caused the heart attack and if you know my Grandpa, he doesn't put much stock in medical procedures and such. We didn't expect him to want the angiogram, but he said God kept him around so he might as well find out what happened. They performed the test and determined all 4 passages to his heart were clogged and he needs a quadruple bypass. Yikes! Again, we didn't expect him to allow the surgery as he said he'd never go under the knife, but he said that if God wanted to keep him around for some reason, he might as well improve his quality of life (as he understood he'd just be another heart attack waiting to happen AND he's been having some really bad breathing problems due to his heart).

So...Grandpa is undergoing heart surgery on Wednesday at 8:30am. Again, my Grandpa said that if God wants to take him on the table, so be it. If not, he'll come out in better health than he started. ha! What a very practical view of things.
So at this point, the prayers requested are for his surgery...of course for the doctors wisdom and procedural focus and then of course for my Grandma and the rest of the family to just have peace through the rest of this and then for the probable marathonish rehab process.