Friday The 13th
Friday The 13th.
Conjures up a sense of foreboding for many. For me, a specific Friday The 13th is indelibly seared in my brain.
Friday, December 13, 2013. A landmark. That’s the day my dad, Norb Kwiecinski, was admitted to Lutheran General Hospital — again — to have fluid drained. Again. His heart was failing. Rapidly.
Talk about foreboding.
He wasn’t himself that Thanksgiving. Normally the life of the party, I can’t unsee one particular moment from that day.
Everyone was gathering in the kitchen. Dinner was almost ready. But Dad lingered — alone — in the mostly dark living room. From my vantage point in the bright, bustling kitchen, Dad’s listless silhouette juxtaposed the joyful giggling and chattering all around me.
Dad was at Lutheran General just before Thanksgiving, too. We worried he wouldn’t be home for Thanksgiving. Now, we were relieved that he was with us, but clearly something wasn’t right. Mom recounted how she’d been concerned about him since the summer.
That’s when the flags went up for me, too, one gorgeous, sunny day earlier in the year. I forget the month, but it was summer. Dad and I had just hit our tee shots on the fourth hole at Peter Jans Golf Course when his cell phone rang. He had a short conversation. I knew from Dad’s side of the conversation, he was speaking with a doctor. It was his cardiologist.
Who gets a call from his cardiologist on the golf course?
They set an appointment. Phone call over, I asked what that was all about. Dad told me he’d been having dizzy spells.
“Are you dizzy now?” I asked. “Only when I bend down to pick up my tee.”
He didn’t pick up another tee the rest of the round.
So obviously something had been going on, but he was tight-lipped around me and I suspect with my sisters too, but Mom was well aware that something wasn’t right.
I have to admit, at the time I discounted the significance of the problem. I was dealing with my own mini-dramas and Dad assured me he was fine as the weeks rolled on.
Besides a weak heart, Dad had a variety of other health problems. He’d been taking blood thinners since the early 1990s, so he bruised and bled easily.
In the fall of 2013, he accidentally bumped his leg as he closed the driver’s side door on his Chevy Blazer. Unbeknownst to him, he opened a wide gash beneath his jeans on his leg. He didn’t realize he was bleeding and proceeded to do some yard work. When he finally went into the house and took off his shoes, he discovered a pool of blood that sloshed in the bottom of his white athletic shoe and stained it a deep red. He never felt a thing. The wound was so deep, he needed weeks of wound care.
As the fall weather turned wintry, I made more frequent visits to the house. I dealt with snow shoveling and occasionally driving Dad to his wound care appointment to give Mom a breather. Yeah, he could and did still drive, but we all agreed it was better if someone was with him for the medical appointments.
And then, of course, the fluid retention. It was one doctor visit after another for Dad’s laundry list of health issues, but the fluid began to be a life and death concern.
When Dad went back to Lutheran General on that Friday, December 13, 2013, I worried that it might be his final trip to the hospital. But underneath an exterior of crepe-paper-thin skin and a face and body bloating from excess fluid, I was only beginning to discover Dad’s relentless resilience.
This tough guy, youngest and smallest of four brothers who never backed down from anyone or any challenge, who scared me to death when I mouthed off to him as a teenager, whom the family affectionately referred to as “The Big N,” was about to encounter his gravest challenge against his most formidable opponent.
He did get out of the hospital again. Right before Christmas. Home long enough to rush Mom to the hospital just before New Year’s Eve. And then Dad was back in the hospital again on January 13, 2014. The dogfight was only beginning.
In the dreadful weeks that followed, Dad squared off against Death five times. Five times, Dad won.
Incredibly, that was only the beginning. After that nightmare, Dad had to learn how to breathe, eat, talk, stand, and walk again. How’s that for an 80th birthday present? He conquered all these obstacles, too.
