Mom's Heart Attack *Update 2* in These Foolish Things

Greetings from the hospital in small town USA. It’s a regional hospital and I am in the ICU with my mother who had a heart attack - likely as a result of a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in her lung). We think the heart attack started Sunday morning when mom was complaining of a tightening in her chest and was having difficulty breathing.

Please, please don’t ask me why they didn’t get to the ER STAT with those symptoms!

I guess they, mom and dad, went to their doctor’s office at something like 9am yesterday and the docs told them to get to their small-town ER clinic where they promptly let them wait for…oh, 10 hours or so while they waited for a hospital bed to open up. WTF?

I drove the 4-hour drive this morning and made it this afternoon. My dad and brother are also here. It’s a little stressful, but mom seems to be doing okay right now. She’s being heavily monitored.

My mom is in pretty great spirits for someone who just had a heart attack and is sitting in the ICU with a large PE. She’s even laughing. It’s blowing my mind.

Actually, she’s trying to sleep a little bit right now while I tap this out. My dad and bro are on their phones. We are waiting for a physician to come in here and tell us what the plan is.

I’ll be back with some more info as I have it.

GS

Update: 11:20pm. My dad and bro left at around 7pm. I’d gotten a cheap-ish hotel room essentially on the hospital grounds, but have decided to stay with mom here in the ICU. I’m on a reclining weird chair, tapping some more out. Mom got feisty after her last nap and was a little snippy with the nursing staff, but I don’t blame her. It’s pretty clear she takes after her own father, who died it the hospital after ripping all of his tubes and wires out. She tried a little of this today, but we convinced her to lie still. I am here on night watch to make sure she doesn’t try anything funny. Plus, I know how it feels to lie alone in a hospital bed in the middle of the night and I just didn’t want her to do that tonight. Despite her being a sometimes difficult human, I do love her so much.

Update 2: It’s now Thursday (my last update was on Tuesday night). Mom is out of the ICU as of yesterday and “downgraded” to a regular room. Honestly, she seems to be doing miraculously and her heart is performing just fine! She still has the pulmonary embolism that they are going to be treating with a major blood thinner like Eliquis (which I was on when my carotid dissected). She had a procedure called IVC Filter to prevent blood clots that are happening in her legs to reach her lungs again. This could have been a sudden death for her! After seeing mom out of the ICU, I decided to drive back to [my city] because mom’s doing so well. She will likely get discharged in the next day or so, and that’s where the challenges will likely begin. She’s going to need home health care and physical therapy to make sure she can walk and move around normally. I’m so glad that my brother and SIL are there - as weird as they are, they truly care and I’m honestly so grateful for that. I’m also very glad I was with my mom overnight in the ICU. She was scared, and I know I made her feel safe. She thanked me profusely and told me she loves me very, very, very much and I know that. I am grateful we had this time together - even though it was very scary. Now I just hope and pray that she can handle this after getting out of the hospital. Thank you ALL for your kind wishes, too. I love you.

Last updated July 20, 2023