Please keep our Dad in your prayers (Jerry Garner - The Tomato Man). I took him to the VA ER at 4.45a yesterday morning with debilitating, excruciating, & unbearable headaches. He has been admitted to the Neurological wing of the hospital and is undergoing a lot of diagnostic testing. He has been in so much pain & agony... hardly able to function at times. The past 6 months have been especially brutal on him, but the last 2 months and more specifically the last 2 weeks have been agonizingly brutal for him. About 6 weeks ago Dad started developing bad headaches. We have been going the traditional medical route of appointment with primary, order CT scan, get results, referred to specialist, make appointment... this all takes many weeks & oftentimes months to go through... then throw in a couple hurricanes and rescheduling of appointments and then it gets even longer. His CT scan showed something, but nothing too crazy. He had a Neurologist appointment scheduled for mid November, and a dialysis related surgery scheduled for today (Friday) so we were trying to manage this day by day and keep the surgery date, other upcoming appointments, and see the Neurologist in a few weeks, but over the past 2 days the headaches have intensified greatly so we hightailed it to the ER. The VA is AMAZING!!! They are doing every test known to man and trying to determine what's going on. I've only had a migraine headache 2 times in my life when I was a kid and I'll never forget how bad they hurt... all I could do was curl up in a ball and cry... so I can only imagine how much misery Dad is experiencing. You can tell that he is in so much pain that he wants to cry, but he holds back. With Dad's stage 4 kidney failure he can only take Tylenol for pain, and it hasn't helped him at all. The only relief he gets is laying flat or at a slight angle and then the pain subsides. But then eventually you have to go back upright to eat, stand up, go to the bathroom, change positions, etc, etc. So that's the whole story. He is on the 5th floor of the Bay Pines VA Hospital in Room #: 5D-109 (Bed 2) ... even in the midst of all the pain the first thing he thinks about is giving out gifts at the hospital which now includes pens, flashlights, watermelon cubers, and his new "limited edition" 2025 calendar hahaha!! I told him that he should make a Tomato Man Swimsuit Edition and circle his birthday (Dec 19th) on all the calendars hahaha! He got a good laugh out of that. They say laughter is the best medicine so I've been doing a pretty good job of giving Dad a daily dose of haha's lol. I'm way behind on social media, but I'll do my best to keep you updated. Thanks for your love & prayers!!
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