SO MY DAD had another seizure—it’s been about six months since the last one; nobody knows what causes them or how to prevent them. It was 4:00 AM Monday morning. He fell heavily, like a sack of bricks, and cracked open his skull above his right eye. There was blood everywhere on the tiled floor of his bathroom, his wife Catherine says.
Catherine called 911. She couldn’t do it from the phone in the bedroom; she went running through the house looking for a working portable phone. The ambulance came fast and he was rushed to Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he stayed overnight.
The hospital wanted to keep him an extra day for fear that the blood floating around inside his skull could clot and kill him or damage his brain. But he demanded to be released. Got so caught up arguing with his nurse that he forgot he and I were on the telephone.
He may have feared that he would never leave that hospital if he didn’t exit immediately. I get that.
The hospital relented, and he and Catherine drove home, where he called me via FaceTime. His face is horribly bruised and cracked—he resembles the De Niro version of Frankenstein’s monster. But he seems to be all right. His mind and character are what they always were.
