Dad's surgery

My dad was finally able to have his surgery on Thursday. For those who don't know (& mostly for documentation), my dad has suffered from diverticulits for a long time. Over the last couple years, it had gotten bad enough that it was causing "holes" in his colon. Every month or so, he have some pretty serious stomach pain and could kind of control it with medicine that he would take for about a week. Last year over Labor Day Weekend, him & my mom were in Brownley camping with friends when he all of a sudden was in horrible pain & had my mom take him to the ER. They admitted him because he was fighting some serious infection in his gut because of the holes in his colon. He spent about two weeks to overcome all that & when he left, he was told that as soon as the infection was gone, he needed to have a good chunk of his colon removed (the part with the holes). A month or so later he went in to have the surgery, but instead the doctor came running out of the OR to get my mom & tell her to meet them in the ER because they thought my dad was having a heart attack. It turned out to be something called an aeortic flutter & after meetings with a cardiologist, he was able to control it with medicine, but the told him his heart just wasn't strong enough for surgery yet. He finally was given the go ahead for surgery, but in the meantime he had another huge flare up & they had to wait until that cleared up to operate. The surgery was only supposed to take 3 hours & it took 7! The doctor said he had alot more work than he expected. The first couple hours was spent cutting through scar tissue due to his appendix rupture 7 years ago were they had to rush to get him open (leaving him with a vertical scar from his belly button down). He said he was just long overdue for this surgery & his colon was litterally like cutting cement so that was part of the extra time too. We all waited in his room for him to come out of recovery & when he did, it was hard to see. He was in ALOT of pain & sounded like he was giving birth (that part was a little funny). They gave him double & half pain meds & he was finally able to go to sleep... after about 30 minutes of chewing out the nurses. He consistantly got better & was able to come home yesterday & celebrate the 4th with us. He is still in some pretty bad pain & cannot wait to have a real meal... he's gone back & forth between soft & liquid diets for the last month! We are just happy it is down with & now he is finally on the road to recovery!!!