stanger_mussle said:
My dad goes into surgery tomorrow to remove a 3.5cm cancerous mass from his left lung. The surgeon will be removing the entire top lobe of the lung as the cancer has attached itself to the lung lining.
I know he's in great hands but I'm still worried about him.
My dad's surgery went well. When they got in there, they found a lot more scar tissue than they anticipated, mostly from a motorized scooter accident 15 years ago where he broke 7(!) ribs. Because of the scar tissue, they could not use the surgical robot and had to go in by hand. This increased his surgery time from 3 hours to 6. It also increased his hospital time from 5 days to 7 days. The surgeon belives they found and removed all of the cancerous mass. They also found that his lymph nodes were cancer free. That's a huge relief.
However, my mom has been staying at a hotel about a half mile from the hospital. The hospital is about 2 hours from where they live. Her best friend of over 50 years came up to stay with her over the weekend. This morning, while they were having coffee, my mom passed out and collapsed. Her friend rushed her to the ER. They found no indications of a heart attack or stroke. I think it was low blood sugar because she doesn't eat when she's stressed. I'm so thankful her friend was there.
Now the plan is for her friend to drive her home since my dad is pretty heavily drugged and won't be released until Friday at the very earliest. Her friend can't stay with her since she has to work Monday. My aunt (my mom's sister) also lives in her hometown but works full time.
I called my boss this evening and told him what was going on. I only have 49 hours of PTO and want to request another 40 hours of advance PTO so I can care for my dad when he gets released. My boss told me he will have to contact HR on Monday to get authorization for the PTO advance. I wanted to fly out tomorrow (Sunday) but it will be Tuesday at the earliest.
I have been talking with my sister, who lives in Kansas to try and coordinate us being home at the same time. Her husband is deployed right now and she doesn't want to fly with her two dogs or kennel them. I was trying to plan to fly Kansas, pick her and the dogs up, and drive her husband's truck to Idaho. That would take an additional 2 days each way. She will not fly with them or kennel them under any circumstances. As much as I'd like her to there when my dad gets released, I just don't think it's going to work. She completely understands and just wants one of us to be there with our mom.
So it looks like I'll be flying home on Tuesday. I really hope I can get authorization for advance PTO as I want to be there when my dad gets released since he will be recovering and can't take care of my mom.
I've been completely stressed out since he went into surgery. I'm 2900 miles away from them right now. I think what will happen is that I'll have to find a job closer to home so I can be there for them. I make good money now and I know my type of job doesn't exist there but being this far away from them is killing me.
berkeley