My Mother

You may recall that in my post on Monday I mentioned that my mother had spent the day in the ER in Lakeland and that they diagnosed her with a severe stomach virus. When I saw her on Tuesday afternoon, she seemed like she was feeling much better, though still a bit run down (as anyone would be after constantly vomiting the entire previous day).

On Wednesday, I assumed that she was still on the mend. I called her a couple of times and left her some messages to call me back, but I knew she had a busy day planned, so I wasn't too concerned when she didn't call me back right away. Late yesterday afternoon, though, my aunt called me to tell me that my mother was sick again and that she wanted me to get my brother and go pick my mother up from Lakeland and bring her home.

My brother had another obligation and couldn't come with me, so Phil and I went out to Lakeland to pick my mother up and bring her home. When we loaded her up, she said that she wanted us to take her to her doctor's office where they are open for after hours urgent care visits until 10 pm. However, while on the way back to our town, she decided that she should really go to the ER instead, so we took her there.

Since we were under the assumption that she still had the virus, or that her illness might be stress related (from everything she's been going through with her father since her mother died), we didn't quite understand why the nurses and doctors kept asking her if she had any history of heart disease or if she had been experiencing any tightness in her chest or shortness of breath.

We soon found out that the blood tests they ran showed she had very elevated cardiac enzyme levels. They kept her in the ER running more tests overnight, and then admitted her to the cardiac unit this morning. After the cardiologist came in to see her, he ordered an echo cardiogram (heart ultrasound), talked to me about his concerns, and then left for the day.

After spending the entire day in the cardiac unit and not knowing how her ECG had turned out, mom's night nurse told us that from what she knew of her test results, mom had had several heart attacks. And from the symptoms that she had when she got sick on Monday, chances are she was having at least one heart attack then. She also said that because mom takes so many pain medications for her fibromyalgia and arthritis, it could have caused her to not feel any pain from other heart symptoms or heart attacks.


Tomorrow, they'll probably be giving her a stress test. The cardiologist will be there for that, so I will definitely be asking him lots of questions.

Please keep my mother in your prayers. Thanks.