Life is Too Short

This week was one of the hardest weeks of my short life so far, and another time where I absolutely hate that I live so far away from home. It started last Sunday morning, I had just gotten home from swim practice and I was making some pancakes when my mom texts all of us kids saying that Dad is in the emergency room, he infarcted his kidney, and they have no idea what caused it. I had no idea what it means to infarct a kidney (I still don\’t have a very good idea) so I immediately called my mom and asked her what was going on. She was in tears and couldn\’t speak very well, so it was hard to tell what was happening. I just remember saying, \”Is he going to be okay? Do I need to get on a plane and come home?\” and all she said back was \”I don\’t know yet, but maybe.\” That\’s definitely something you never want to hear about your daddy. My mind immediately went to the worse case scenario and I started balling. I told Nate I was going to go home anyway, I didn\’t want to sit around and wait for bad news. He helped me calm down, and told me that I just needed to wait and see before making the decision to go home. Luckily my mom called back about an hour later, and explained to me a little better what was going on. He had a blood clot that got lodged in his kidney, causing the kidney to fail and lose function. Although this was bad, he still has one kidney and would be fine as long as this didn\’t happen again. The scary part, was that we had no idea what was causing this, and didn\’t know if and when it could happen again. 

My dad was taken to Sioux Falls from Watertown by ambulence so he could meet up with the kidney and heart specialists to see what could have caused this. For almost 30 hours, he had to lay flat on his back and couldn\’t move so they could try and dissovle the blood clot in his kidney. They were able to get the blood clot removed, but his kidney now only has about 10% function. My dad had to be in the hospital nearly all week as they tried to figure out what had caused it. My mom told me it probably wasn\’t worth coming home, because there wouldn\’t be anything I could do, and at this point we were pretty sure my dad was going to be okay. I was still standing by though, each day debating whether I get on a plane or not, because we STILL had no idea if it would happen again. Finally, Tuesday evening we found out he has Patent foramen ovale (PFO), which is a hole in his heart that failed to close when he was a baby. Because of the hole, blood clots were passing through his heart and being sent willy nilly all over his body, and one landed in his kidney and started causing problems. In order to prevent this from happening again, they had to patch up the hole in his heart, which thanks to modern medicine they could do without cutting his chest open. He\’s still in pretty rough shape and pretty weak, but he\’s finally on the mend and was able to go home Thursday evening.

Although I\’m happy it ended up being something fixable, and we are confident that my daddy will be back to normal soon, it was still a scary week. I\’m pretty sure I drove my mom and my sister up a wall because I wanted an update every 20 minutes, but I could not stand sitting out here not knowing what was going on and not being able to help in anyway. Although I enjoy living in VA, it definitely makes it hard not to be home when things like this happen.

Unfortunately, because of all of this my dad was forced to end his consecutive exercise streak, after almost 12 years of working out every single day. It might seem like something minor when you think about what he all went through this week, but if you know my dad, you know how important this was for him. I know he\’s bummed about it, and he will be for a long time, but once he\’s allowed his body to heal up, he\’ll have a new goal to beat. It\’s a heck of a goal, but it\’s worth fighting for and I know my dad can do it again and go even further this time around, and we\’ll be cheering him on every step of the way! Members of the Watertown Area Run Club even ran for him as his \”substitutes for consecutive day 4200\” on Wednesday, which I thought was pretty awesome!

Lastly, it also means that my parents will not be coming out to DC next week for the Cherry Blossom race. I\’m really really bummed about this, because I was really looking forward to running it with them, and just being able to hang out with them in general since I haven\’t seen them since Christmas. But the last thing my dad needs is to sit on a plane for that long and risk further complications with the blood clots, so I\’d rather that he stay home anyway if it\’s going to be a risk. It makes me mad that no one has invented a teleportation machine yet…. Someone let me know if this is doable by next weekend. Anyway, Nate and I still plan to run it, and we will run it with my dad in mind the whole way. We\’ll take a bunch of different pictures for them, and make it feel like hes\’ living the experience through us. It won\’t be as good as actually being there, but it will be a close second. 

In the end, I\’m just glad this week is over and I\’m relieved to know that my dad is on his way back to being healthy. It was really scary not knowing what was going to happen, but it reminded me not to take any day for granted. You never know when things like this are going to happen, and you never know which day will be your last. Hold your loved ones close and forgive others for wrongdoings they\’ve done. Life\’s too short!!

If anyone sees my daddy, give him a hug for me. Hope you\’re feeling better soon dad, and I love you so so so so much!!

Until Next Time!

Megan Reiffenberger