We had to fly out to Iowa last week to be with my dad who was in the hospital. It's kind of a long story... but here's the short version. Two weeks ago, my dad thought it would be a great idea to leave on a road trip across America and then drive up to his home town near Montreal. The only problem was that 1) he didn't tell us, and 2) that he's not fully able to take care of himself at this point in his illness.

The next Sunday morning, a police officer came to my parent's house and told my mom that my dad was in a bad car accident. He was in a village in Iowa and had driven off a ravine and hit a tree. He was found by someone passing by some hours after he had crashed. He had a fractured sternum and had to be airlifted to Iowa City. Honestly he's lucky to be alive. When we got out to Iowa, the doctors told us they had to remove 2.5 liters of blood from one of his lungs and that it had partially collapsed. At that point he was completely unresponsive and didn't even know that we were there.

A couple days later he was able to say a few words and he was awake a few minutes at a time during the day, however the accident had made his liver and kidney illness far worse. The only good thing about this accident was that they've now sped up his transplant cycle. He now has a MELD score (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) of 30 which qualifies him for an immediate transplant. He's going to be transferred to New Orleans tomorrow to see if he's stable enough to receive one there.

Instead of posting a bunch of pictures from the hospital (which was pretty upsetting for me), I decided to post the photos of the good parts of our trip. After we spent the day at the hospital, each evening we would go out around town and see the country. There is so much space out there and everyone is so friendly. I had never seen a cornfield or a firefly before. Where we were in Iowa was completely rural, so the views of the stars were incredible. I was able to get some pretty cool pictures of the Milky Way.

So that was my week. I'm sure glad to be back home with my kiddos, and I'm hoping my dad can pull himself out of this.