Good news. Grandpa's cardiac arrest was not a result of a poor or weak
heart, rather it was due to complications involving a feeding-tube that
he had pulled out two mornings ago. The Monticello ER doctors attempted
to put the tube back in place, but they didn't do a "dye" test to make
sure that the tube was correctly placed. It was leaking contents into
his abdomen, which caused his body to dehydrate trying to combat the
infection and inflammation. This left his blood volume low, which in
turn made his heart work harder to get oxygen to the rest of his body.
His heart faltered because there simply wasn't enough oxygen to go
around.

The docs patched him up sometime after midnight last night, irrigating
his abdomen and removing the food contents. They patched the hole in
his stomach where the old feeding tube had been and placed a new feeding
tube further down his small intestines. They'll be limited to the
amount of food they can feed him through the tube, and they'll likely
have to "force-feed" him because of his poor appetite.

If you're not up to date with things, Grandpa had a colonestomy a little
over three weeks ago. His large intestine had died likely due to
infection of an ulcer referred to as colitis. We've been on this
roller-coaster of surgery to recovery since then.

Currently he's under heavy sedation and looks to be relaxing
comfortably. Like any surgery, he'll be in pain once they bring him out
of sedation, and he'll be uncomfortable because of the feeding tube
coming out of his nose, the ventillator in his throat and the various
IV's. No one like to be a human pin cushion.

Well, now that I've had some sleep, it's time to shower, eat something,
and call up work to see if any fires have been spreading in the IT
world.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Chad