Odd dreams and thunderstorms

I had a dream about my grandparents last night. I've actually dreamt about them a lot lately for some reason. In this dream, Missy, Mel and I were at their house and I was trying to fix dinner, but my grandpa had gone to the store and not brought home any meat. I remember he had cinnamon rolls and cereal, but no meat, so I sent him back to the store. My grandma told him to get cube steak so I could make "crispy meat" (her words not mine). I guess she was trying to say she wanted me to make breaded meat because when he got back from the store I tried to make it, but they had no Italian bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese or garlic, so what I made was pretty awful. Then, while we were all sitting around in the kitchen eating a huge thunderstorm blew up. You had to have known my grandmother to realize what a disaster that was. The woman was terrified of thunder, lightning, anything related to stormy weather. How she survived for 80 years in tornado alley, I'll never understand. Anyway, last night in my dream she absolutely went off in hysterics about the impending storm. I grabbed her by the shoulders and just yelled at her, "It is what it is! All the crying and wailing in the world isn't going to stop the storm so go to the basement and get over it!" It was just such a bizarre dream. I can still feel her shoulders in my hands when I grabbed her. Isn't that odd? I remember one time when I used to listen to John Edward he said that our loved ones come back to visit us in our dreams, but not all the dreams we have of them, just the ones that stay with you. I guess if that's the case I had a visit from grandma and grandpa tonight. Funny thing - we're expecting some pretty good storms tonight and tomorrow. Odd.

Then tonight, after we had just finished a wonderful steak dinner I got a phone call from my dad. He was having trouble breathing and was having some chest tightness. He told me it was the second time that it had happened and he had gone to the hospital the first time and they sent him home with some anxiety medication, but it wasn't helping. I asked him if they had done an EKG or anything and he said no. Hello? Of course this was the same hospital where the ER doctor told him to put heat on tendinitis, so I didn't have much faith in what they told him. So I asked him if he wanted me to take him to the hospital and he said yes. Let me tell you, if my dad thinks he needs to go to the hospital, I'm worried. He's a typical male (and an old one at that) who never goes to the doctor. So, Meg and I went out and got him and took him to the hospital. What? Oh, yes. He is married. And his wife was home. Don't even get me started on that one.

We spent about 3 hours at the hospital, they did an EKG, which was fine, but they're keeping him overnight to keep tabs on his cardiac enzymes and then he's having a stress test first thing in the morning because he has some cardiac risk factors, he's 74, he's diabetic, he's an ex-smoker, and he has a family history of heart disease (my grandfather died from complications of a heart attack that went untreated for over 8 hours). So, dad is spending the night at the hospital with Meg sleeping in the chair next to him. I can't possibly spend the night in a recliner or I wouldn't be able to move tomorrow. I'm just hoping that everything is okay with his heart and it's just some anxiety and/or depression. But.... It was really hard for me to see my dad in the hospital hooked up to all those stupid monitors. It struck me, again, that my dad is getting old. My dad who I always looked up to as my "superman" is, well, an old man. He totters when he walks sometimes, he has problems with his memory, he's diabetic, old, gray, and looks to me for direction. My superman is human after all. And that makes me sad.