To gamble or not to gamble?

On Good Friday, Dutch "decided" to add yet another bit of excitement to our lives. After a wonderful breakfast with friends he wanted to go to bed as soon as we got home because he wasn't feeling too well. I thought nothing of it and tucked him in. An hour later, he woke up with: "I still don't feel so well" and my mind went over the instructions from doctors that I could remember. What do I see the nurses do? Take his blood sugar in case that's out of whack, and take his blood pressure. His blood pressure was fine but his pulse was 156. Well THAT didn't sound right and I proceeded to silent prayers and mental checklists and, OK, NOW what do I do?

The nurse who comes to do wound care was just a few minutes away from coming for her biweekly visit, so I met Vicky at the door with: "his pulse is 156". She took it again and came up with basically the same number and told me to call the doctor. Laura from the Doctor's office said to bring him in and the question was, do I take him the 45 minutes to Scripps or the 25 minutes to Mission Hospital? After a check on traffic with the help of our daughter, we decided to head for Scripps. With Vicky helping me get Dutch ready and Niqua on the phone with the traffic report, we got out the door in just a few minutes and hoped there weren't too many cops on the road to San Diego. During the Urgent Care visit, his pulse went down again on its own and didn't require any intervention. PTL!!!

Turns out he was in Arterial Fibrillation which put us on another roller coaster ride, just in case we didn't already have enough fun with his other issues. Since he can't have the standard treatments for this, the idea now is to prevent any further occurrences. So he has to take meds to prevent it and I have to get him to a hospital quickly in case he does have another episode.

So the question is: Scripps or Mission?
Today he is trying to make plans to visit the kids in Kansas City sometime or go on some other trip. Now how do you do that when the question on the table is Scripps or Mission? 25 minutes or 45 minutes away from a hospital? Or to put it another way: Stress out or trust God?
Stay tuned........

The irony is that he looks and sounds and feels better than he has.....