My Mother

My mother has had an irregular heartbeat for the past six or seven years. Every so often it starts fluttering and she ends up in the hospital for a few days, after which they send her home. It had gotten to be such a regular occurrence that my parents don't even tell us kids anymore till after it happens. Well, this time was different. My mother went in for a kidney test of some sort on Thursday and her doctor gave her an EKG. He looked at the results and said, "I think you are having a heart attack right now."

Somehow, and getting a coherent story out of my parents is sometimes really difficult these days (my dad is 86 and my mother is 83), it was hours later before she got to the hospital and even more hours later before she was actually admitted. My dad called us on Friday morning and while he usually has a blase, "here we go again" attitude regarding Mom's hospital stays, this time he was worried; I could hear it in his voice. I still worked on Friday but spent a good portion of the day on the phone with my brothers and sister around the country keeping everyone informed as to what was going on. Mom thought she was going to go home on Friday, but her blood pressure was erratic as was her heartbeat.

Today we went over there (San Bernardino, about 30 miles away), had lunch with my dad at home and then headed off to the hospital, thinking we would assist in getting Mom home sometime today. It didn't happen and when they began feeding her dinner at 5:00 we all left. We took my father home and while sitting in their driveway bringing a brother up to speed on the cell phone my father waved my wife into the house. Mom was on the phone.

The cardiologist never showed up today, but had been kept informed of all her readings all day long. Right after we left the nurse came in and told my mother that the cardiologist had decided that the medications they were using to stabilize her heart were not working and he is going to schedule her for a pacemaker implant for sometime tomorrow. Kind of scary but my mother was actually campaigning the doctor for a pacemaker since she arrived on Thursday, so she is happy about it.

Me, I'm scared, but if it solves the recurring problem, it needs to be done.