The seeds of our Yellowstone trip were planted when my parents traveled to Spokane with us for my graduation from Gonzaga back in 2015. Once we got to Montana, my dad wanted to ask everyone about deer and elk. My dad has had some health challenges since then, and I thought it would be nice for him and my mom to explore the world. Although my dad has lived in Utah his entire life, he has never been to Yellowstone, so we decided that might be a good place to start. Plus, Kevin, my mom, and I hadn't been there for a significant amount of time either. So we found a date that would work for my schedule and started making hotel reservations and other plans.
The Monday before we were supposed to leave (incidentally the same day as the solar eclipse), my mom went in for a PET scan of her heart. This was just a just to be safe procedure, as all other tests involving her cardiac function had came back normal. They found a blockage, so she was taken to the Cardiac Cath Lab to have a stent placed. The procedure was unsuccessful, as the doctor was unable to get to the blockage, and she was told open heart surgery was the only way to get open up her vessel. Kind of a bummer for a single bypass. This day was an orientation day, and I did not have my phone with me, it was in my office, so I didn't know any of this was happening until after it had happened.
My mom was fine, but I started to have misgivings about our trip. Yes, I am a nurse, but I am a NICU nurse, I don't deal with potential heart attack patients, especially my mother. My mom was told she could go to Yellowstone, but to take it easy. We secured a wheelchair for just in case (which considering how many wheelchairs my father has, was quite the task), and we made sure that she took her CPAP machine along we a portable oxygen concentrator (my dad sleeps with oxygen these days).
The day this all went down Kevin and I were both thinking that it might be a good idea to stay home, but when I talked to my dad, he sounded so excited, that I didn't feel right suggesting to him that it might be better for my mom to stay home. My mom likewise didn't want to stay home because she knew how much my dad wanted to go. After 32 years of interaction with my parents, I knew arguing would not be successful, so I started to look forward to the trip.
Fast forward a few days to the day before we left. Kevin has a cold and feels horrible, my mom is going through the tail end of a cold, and my dad was diagnosed with a bladder infection. My dad has had some doozies of infections in the past, but he was on Macrobid, so my mom reassured me he would be fine.
Friday morning, we go to pick my parents up. My dad was semi stiff, and we had a hard time getting him into the truck, but the guy is 70 and a paraplegic, so we chalked it up to that. He also had a hard time holding onto things, leading to crumbs and spilled coffee, but he also has rheumatoid arthritis. He hadn't slept well the night before, which we blamed for his tiredness and lack of chatter. We alternated between Tylenol and Ibuprofen to help control his fever.
We arrived in West Yellowstone in the late afternoon, and after checking into the hotel and dropping stuff off, we went to check things out before it got too dark. We stopped at Gibbon Falls, but my dad didn't want to get out and wheel down to look at it, and my mom was pretty stiff as well, so Kevin and I went to look at it briefly. After we got back, we drove back into town and got some food. We ate and made plans to meet up early so we could drive out to either the Lamar Valley or Hayden Valley and see some animals.
The next morning at breakfast, my dad couldn't hold onto anything. He also couldn't stay seated upright in his wheelchair. He just kept bending forward. His hands were also shaking almost uncontrollably, but he was still pretty with it. Kevin and I tried to talk him into staying at the hotel and resting, but he wouldn't have anything to do with that, so we loaded up and headed out to the Hayden Valley.
We briefly stopped at a hot spring on the side of the road, at which point Kevin had to readjust my dad’s seat belt to help him stay more upright, as he was pretty much laying on Kevin by this point. That helped a bit, but as we continued driving, he was more and more out of it. He kept reaching towards the gear shifter and the heater knobs, and finally we decided to stop in order to reorient him.
When he told us he was in Kamas and that Bush was the President, we decided it might be good to get him back to the room to rest. However at this point he was burning up and not really drinking, so before we were to West Yellowstone we had pretty much decided to take him to the hospital. The question was which hospital. There isn't much around West Yellowstone, especially on a Saturday, so we had to choose between Big Sky, Montana and Rexburg, Idaho. Big Sky was closer, but Rexburg was bigger. My mom called the Kamas Health Center to get their opinion, and they said to get him to the ER ASAP. We stopped at the hotel to grab some stuff, and I pretty much lost it. I was scared out of my mind, frustrated that our vacation was not going as planned, and whatever else. I was probably in need of some mild sedatives, but I survived.
After a drive to Big Sky that would have made the characters in The Fast and the Furious proud (and lead everyone else to shake their heads) with very little cussing from my dad about Kevin's driving (extremely unusual), we arrived at the Big Sky Hospital, which was as one of the nurses called it “a glorified urgent care.” Despite its smallness, the staff were awesome and were able to start hydrating my dad and get stronger antibiotics into him.
We ended up hanging out there for a few hours, then he was transferred to the hospital in Bozeman. By this time, he knew who the president was and was starting to get his feistiness back. It is amazing what a couple of liters of fluid and oxygen can do for you. He was released from the hospital two days later, just in time for the vacation to end.
So if you were wondering why there was no mention of my parents after Friday, that is why. This is also why being a nurse is bad, especially when you get newsletters that sepsis kills every week. I was pretty much convinced my dad was dying (he wasn't). I also felt really bad that the person who was most looking forward to this vacation did not get to enjoy any of it. The parts of Yellowstone he did see, he probably won't remember because he was so out of it. Despite the extra work that taking my parents is (older people require a lot of gear), I hope that we are able to make this trip again and that my dad will be able to enjoy it.
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