We planned to go to Soda Springs today anyway, but not particularly for this purpose. Mother called about 9 a.m. to tell us that she was taking dad in to see the doctor at 10. Dad was complaining of feeling lousy. He had a lot of gas and a distended abdomen. The doctor said it looked like a gall bladder problem and ordered an ultrasound. That showed a gall bladder that absolutely needed to come out. They admitted dad to the hospital.

However, his heart rate was very high, his heart rhythm out of sync, and the heart beat wasn’t as strong as they would like, so the hospital and doctor in Soda Springs decided to transfer him by ambulance to the hospital in Pocatello. We got to the hospital in Pocatello to find that he had been admitted into Intensive Care! When we met with the surgeon, we learned that dad was quite sick and that they needed to get some other things (like his heart) stabilized before they could do surgery. The cardiologist will be in later this evening to do an evaluation and determine what needs to be done to get dad in a position to have his gall bladder removed. The surgeon told us that they needed to remove the gall bladder pretty soon as it would eventually rupture bringing a serious risk of gangrene, but that they didn’t want to kill him in the process…. Good plan in my opinion. So, I’m at the house taking care of Bradica and will head back to the hospital in a few minutes. I’ll update this later!