The biggest sigh of relief...

My blog has been rather bereft of posts lately because my dad was admitted to the hospital this past Monday, and nothing else seemed quite as important to me. He has been dealing with terrible, clenching back pain since the end of January, and three emergency room visits and countless pain medication prescriptions later, they finally admitted him for testing. They discovered he had a staph infection (probably the same one he had earlier in February). He had been taking a great amount of pain medication for the back pain, as well as ibuprofen, and that might have kept his fever down, tricking doctors. During his testing this week, they discovered a mass on his spine, and he was sent for a biopsy. The word "mass" is terrifying in its ambiguity. All I could think about this past week was the dreaded "c-word," the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named of all of my conversations. Thankfully (if there be any thanks in this situation), the biopsy revealed that it is a mass of infection, more staph, which has probably been causing his back pain. They are giving him heavy duty antibiotics and pain medicine "stronger than morphine" (I didn't realize there was such a thing...is it crystal meth?). I'm not excited about his diagnosis, but it should be treatable and help him back to his old self someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, because he has suffered so much recently. He will be in the hospital a few more days and will go home with an IV, but he has definitely been where he needs to be (plus, that new hospital is like the Hilton, seriously, have you been in that place? I kept looking around for the pool and weight room...).

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.