Belated Stint

So Monday April 2 my mom calls me & says "Now don't get upset... I want you to call me in the morning & make sure I'm not dead because I think I had a heart attack". I'm all "Go to the hospital cracky old lady" and she says "No, I feel fine now & I've got a Dr's appt on Wendesday the 4th. So I'll just tell my Dr about it then."

Wednesday comes & the Dr runs an EKG that comes back abnormal then sets her up with the cardiologist that does blood work & immediatly admits her to Presby Hospital. They want to do a heart cathiderzation & if they find blockage, repair it with a stint Thursday morning. (Hooker should have listened to me - they call them heart attacks for a reason.. they're attacks meaning it goes away... how many people w/ asthema do you know that are ALWAYS in respritory distress?)

I got the voicemail @ 445 while I'm waiting for my chirprators appt that mom's been admitted to the hospital. Ya, I'm none too happy at this point. I figured I might as well go on with my appointment since I was there, but then I had to drive home to walk the Mijia before comming back towards Uptown to see her.

Blah blah all that, visit her, go take care of her dogs, then go home.... where I can't sleep because my cracky mother is lying in the cardiac unit of a hospital about to have a proceedure that she blew off like it was nothing.

So on w/ my research & talking to people.. the proceedure entails cutting an opening in a major vein. Then they run a tiny camera up following the path of the vien that runs from your thight to your heart. Once in the heart they look at all the arteries checking for clogs & damage done by the heart attack. The hope being that there's nothing to find, but more then likely there's gonna be a cloged artery to repair. During the repair they'd use a small balloon to expand the clogged artery then install a small tube called a stint to hold the artery open so blood can flow freely through it. The entire proceedure should be an 1 hr to 1.5 hrs long.

I got up early on Thursday to take care of moms dogs again then spend the entire day at the hospital. YUCK! Since mom was going to be on mild anesthia she wasn't allowed to eat or even have water after midnight. Isn't it always the way that when your told you can't do or have something, it's all you want? So all morning all I heard was how hungry she was... and they let her sit there hungry until they FINALLY took her back around 1230p.

They took me up to the cardiac waiting area... which is pretty nice. They've got a couple TV's, a small private room where if I had an ethernet cable I could've plugged in my laptop, and volunteers to talk to (if you like talking... personally I don't want to see people much less talk to them if I don't know them).

About 2p a nurse gets my attention... "Jolly family, the Dr is ready to speak with you" hahaha Jolly Family - I'm 1 person that doesn't a family make. Then she takes me down the hall to the "conference room" a tiny little room w/ 4 chairs & a whiteboard to wait for the Dr.

Good news - there was 1 aretery that had 95-99% blockage but all other arteries looked great and only slight damage to the heart muscle that should fix itself over time (kind of like a pulled muscle gets back to normal on it's own after a week or so). Since we have no family history, Mom's not a smoker or drinker, no cholesterol issues, and has a history of Low Bloodpreasure I asked what could've caused this. Doc was all sometimes risk factors don't matter, sometimes blood just starts clotting. BUT he did say since all the rest of them look good, this was probably a one off kinda thing that we will never have to worry about agian - she should just keep up her good heart health habits.

They kept her overnight again Thursday night for observation & so she could be kept awake by the IV & blood preasre machine and wake me from a semi sound sleep Friday @ 6AM (when I still hadn't gone to sleep at a decent time). Again good news, they relesed her around 10a Friday with the instructions of no driving until Monday 9th & no going back to work until Monday 16th - just to keep her stress levels down.

Cracky old lady really should listen to me when I tell her to go to the doctor.