Stroke

The phone rang this morning at 8:22 and I knew it couldn't be good. It was our stake conference today and there really wasn't any reason for someone to be calling that early on a Sunday morning. I answered the phone and it was Paul's mom and she said she thought his dad was having or had a stroke. Paul talked to her and determined he was coherent and he wanted a priesthood blessing and didn't want anyone to call 911. So we hustled down to their house (luckily they only live about 5 minutes away) and called a neighbor to help with the blessing. Then we took him to Intermountain Medical Center ER. Luckily it wasn't busy at all when we walked in and they got him right back into a room. After hearing the first two symptoms - his left hand was numb and he had a bad headache on his right side they called in the the Acute Stroke Response Team. We even heard them paging the team to his room several times. They had over 10 people in his room immediately working on him and then off to a CT scan within 15 minutes. The scan showed a blood clot in his brain on the right side and they were able to get ATP started right away. It was great news to hear that they had found things so quickly. I was so impressed with the neuro team, especially the neurologist and the nurse practitioner that worked with us. Paul's dad is an emotional patient and cries a lot and that is such a hard thing to see. Paul does a great job with his parents and remains very calm and composed in these stressful situations. We spent several hours at the hospital taking turns being in the room with John and waiting in the waiting room.
All while this was going on our kids went to stake conference on their own. Brooke got everybody up and dressed and off to church. Luckily Justin could drive them to the stake center. I was so impressed with all of them. It made me so proud of them. What great kids!!
At the end of the day Paul said his dad wasn't doing too well - emotionally but seemed okay physically. He has to lay flat and still for 24 hours so that will be the worst of it, we think.