MY BRACKET died yesterday **UPDATE: it's been 2 days**

It was a Monday. Monday November 21, 2016. MY BRACKET was in the CICU at Grandview Hospital just south of Birmingham. MY BRACKET had been there since the 7th and was recovering from open-heart surgery done exactly one week before on the 14th.

MY BRACKET was in good spirits to start the day. MY BRACKET'S wife had gone home the night before for the first time since MY BRACKET had been admitted. She was preparing the house for us to come home, buying groceries, supplies we'd need for MY BRACKET, things like that. You see, MY BRACKET was doing so well that they'd scheduled MY BRACKET to go him the next day.

MY BRACKET didn't know it at the time, but when MY BRACKET'S wife arrived back at the hospital that morning she and MY BRACKET'S nurse both noticed something had gone wrong. What they noticed was my color, it had left MY BRACKET. They described MY BRACKET as looking "gray".

As the day went on, MY BRACKET started noting MY BRACKET was having breathing trouble. MY BRACKET had no idea why though. Luckily my nurse, who had noticed something was wrong, though what that might be they had not figured out yet. She started by ordering things like blood work, x-rays, things like that to try and figure out what was going on. She even called in doctors to check MY BRACKET out as the day progressed.

AS the day wore on breathing kept getting harder and harder. MY BRACKET didn't know it yet, in fact neither did the hospital staff, that MY BRACKET was slowly bleeding to death internally.

What had happened was the dosage of MY BRACKET'S blood thinner was too high. MY BRACKET'S blood had become too thin and was leaking out of my heart through my still healing sutures. This blood was filling up both MY BRACKET'S chest cavity, squeezing MY BRACKET'S lungs and thus making it more and more difficult to breath, and the membrane that surrounds my heart, thus slowly squeezing MY BRACKET'S heart.

By early evening MY BRACKET knew something had gone bad wrong. MY BRACKET simply could not hardly breath. MY BRACKET felt like MY BRACKET was being slowly strangled to death. Around 6 PM MY BRACKET was begging the nurses to help MY BRACKET breath. That's the last thing MY BRACKET remember from the day.

According to my wife, who had been by my side all day while this was going on, they got MY BRACKET in my bed and started working on MY BRACKET more. She said MY BRACKET was awake until about 9:00 PM or so when she said MY BRACKET said "I'm sorry", my eyes rolled back in my head and everything just flat-lined. No breathing, no heartbeat, nothing.

They started rescue procedures while they rushed her out and into the waiting room. They got MY BRACKET'S heart started and rushed MY BRACKET to surgery. They cracked MY BRACKET'S chest back open and that's when they found the bleeding from my heart. What had made MY BRACKET'S heart stop was the membrane around it had filled up with blood to the point my heart could no longer beat. They opened up the membrane and installed more drain tubes coming out of MY BRACKET’S abdomen.

The next thing MY BRACKET knew MY BRACKET was waking up with a breathing tube down MY BRACKET'S throat. It was about 1:00 AM or so in the morning and MY BRACKET could hear MY BRACKET'S wife and brother talking over to one side. Seems like they were talking to a nurse.

That's pretty much it. MY BRACKET still had a whole long road of tough recovery to go through, mostly due to massive loss of blood and still massive amounts of fluid in MY BRACKET'S chest cavity around my lungs. But going on four months since that day, MY BRACKET is doing a lot better and am almost back to normal.

The End