Last night, around this time, my dad had a heart attack. It was severe enough that when he went into the emergency room at the hospital in Beaver Dam, they med flighted him to the UW Hospital here in Madison.

Fortunately, as I was told this morning, he is ok. I went in with my sibs to see him around noon today. He was still in the ICU and hooked up to various machines (though they had just taken away the oxygen tube from his nose) and he looked like hell. Still, he was in good spirits and able to joke around about the situation. When my sister remarked that with all the wires, it almost looked as though we could send a fax from my dad, he answered, "Yes but not in color." We stayed to about an hour, and then he needed to sleep a bit.

Back in July, he had serious chest pains and went into the emergency room, thinking it was a heart attack. The doctors decided that it was actually severe indigestion, so he was given meds for acid reflux and told to watch his diet. Last night, he had the same pain as during the summer, and all the acid reflux meds did for him was make him throw up. When it became evident that the situation was not improving, he went back into the hospital. I am so glad that he did, and didn't try to tough it out. I'm fairly certain that while he may *also* have acid reflux, what he had during the summer was probably also a heart attack--possibly just a milder one. But I'm not a doctor, so I wouldn't know.

I'll be stopping back in tomorrow to see how he is doing.