Really, More?

Mom was doing so well.  She was slowly gaining her strength back and had already had to have her hair cut a few times.  Her oncologist was amazed at how well she was doing, and the progress she was making.  However, she did warn mom not to push herself to hard though, to push, but not as hard as she was.  Things were looking up for her!

During the deer hunt, just before Halloween, my mom feel off her stairs.  She had passed out and fell backwards onto the hardwood floor.  She was taken to the hospital by ambulance, she had broke her wrist really bad.  A week later she would have surgery to reset her bones.  The surgery was very painful, and that night she was in a lot of pain.  I know my mom is in excruciating pain when she says that the pain is worse then her chemo pain.  Sadly, the pain pills were not working, nothing was.  She wanted the pain to stop, even if that meant giving up.

A day or two after her surgery, while a neighbor was over to the house visiting, my mom passed out. Her neighbor stayed with her until my sister-in-law and nephew showed up.  They got my mom up to her room and thought she was okay, but she passed out two more times.  My sister-in-law took her to the hospital, my dad and I meet them there.  She was not doing good, physically or emotionally, she could not stop crying.  The doctor did an EKG and blood work.  The ER doctor said she needed to stay overnight, she was dehydrated.  

My dad was due to have total knee replacement that next morning at 5 a.m., at a hospital 2 1/2 hours away. He was now refusing to go, understandably! But my mom convinced him that he needed to get it done, that he could not wait for a time when she would not be sick.  His knee was really bad, the doctor said there was not one there. He did not know how my dad was walking around.  His surgery went great and we returned home in four days.

While my dad and I were away, my brother and his family were with my mom.  She ended up staying three nights.  While there, they ran more tests on her such as a chest x-ray, blood work, and an echocardiogram. The doctors found that she had suffered a minor heart attack, they were not sure when, but they had discovered it through the blood work.  They had a cardiologist look at it, and he talked to my brother, his wife, and my mom about what had been found.  

The cardiologist was not sure if it had happened during her chemo, or if it had happened around the time of her wrist surgery.  He mentioned that the type of chemo she had could cause heart attacks. She also has a leaky valve and possibly a scar on the bottom of her heart.  And while at the hospital, she received 20 pounds of fluid through the IV, so she has to much fluid in her body. 

While all this was happening, her kidney function was down. With her kidney function down they would not be able to go in and look at what is going on with her heart.  Doing that would kill her kidneys.  So we were told we would just have to sit and wait for her kidney function to go up, before they would do anything with her.  They sent her home with a heart monitor, and she has to be under 24 hour care.  With my dad in rehab, that meant she was released to my siblings and I.  

She has been at my house for a week.  She spent the first couple of days with my brother while I took care of our dad.  I don't know what I was expecting, I was nervous, but I definitely was not prepared to see her in the condition she was in.  She is very weak, and her breathing is very loud, like an old man that smokes. Her chest rises and falls very heavy and very fast.  She does not sleep well, her coughing keeps her up all night.  

It is scary to see my mom like this, this is worse then when she was having chemo treatments. What if one of the most important people in my life leaves me, what if she stops breathing and her loving, sweet, caring heart stops beating?  How could that happen, after all she has been through this year? She beat stage 4 cancer, now this was going to be what takes her?  No, I will not let her give up, we will not let her give up!  No matter what she says, she is not going anywhere, she has come to far and still has a lot farther to go!

Thanks for reading, lots of love!