Dad update and I told you I was a nice person

Dad Update

Dad's still doing well. They're keeping him in the hospital a few more days. Turns out it isn't the stent that's cracked, which is very good news. It appears now that the tube leading from the stent used for flushing the stent out for the first six weeks after insertion had a blockage. The radiology test they did to find the possible stent problem seems to have cleared whatever blockage there was in the tube and, hopefully, fixed that part of the situation. They're still watching dad for infection, but things are looking really good.

I was watching a movie with dad today on Turner Classic Movies and he called Yves Montand a bastard, so I knew he was getting back to normal.

I Told You I Was a Nice Person

When I was leaving the hospital, I noticed an elderly man walking past the parking garage in the 100 degree heat and he was obviously lost. I asked him if I could help him find something and he had a little piece of paper in his hand with his doctor's name on it. No phone number, no address, just the name.

I asked him if he would recognize the building if he saw it and he said he thought he would. So I called my office, told them I'd be late getting back to work and drove him around until we found the building. He had accidentally parked in the wrong parking garage. I drove him back to his truck and told him to follow me back to the other parking garage.

During our ride searching for the doctor's office, I questioned him about his family and friends. If he seemed to have dementia or anything, I was going to go with him all the way to his doctor's office. He knew what day it was. He knew what time his appointment was and he knew what street the wrong parking garage was on. He also said that someone usually goes with him to the doctor, but nobody was available today and the closest his children are to the area is Baton Rouge (about 3 hours away).

So, I left him in that parking garage and worried about him the rest of the day and I'll worry about him the rest of my life. I thought of him and all of my family and friends who might get lost one day with nobody to help them.

My distraction showed on my face when I got back to work and when my friend asked me if I was okay, I started crying. Then, I couldn't stop crying and everybody thought something had happened with my dad, so I had to keep explaining why my eyes were red. Because of my dad being sick, I couldn't blame the red eyes on allergies and get away with that. They would think I wasn't telling them the whole truth about my dad. Repeating the story kept making me feel worse instead of better.

One reason I couldn't stop crying was because I felt like God put me in that spot at that moment to help the man and it was an emotionally overwhelming feeling. My mom was about 10 minutes late getting back to the hospital so I could go back to work. If she had been on time, I wouldn't have run into the lost man.

The strangest part of the whole episode was my walk from the hospital to the parking garage where I first saw the man wandering around. I've walked up and down that two block long walkway many times over the past week. Most of the people don't make eye contact, because they're either going to work or leaving work or are preoccupied with whatever reason they're visiting the hospital.

My walk toward the garage before I met the lost man was different though. Every single person, and I mean EVERY single person, looked at me and smiled. It was so obviously different that I wondered if my shirt was unbuttoned or my hair was weird or something. I know this is going to sound weird or corny or something, but I feel like there were angels around me leading me to the lost man and the strangers walking toward me as I left the hospital could feel their energy.

I'm not saying you should go around picking up strangers or forcing old people to get into your car, but do try to listen to your angels.