Visiting My Mom at the Hospital

The week before Thanksgiving, my mother had her second knee replacement surgery. The first one had been successful so we weren't expecting any problems with this one. A few days after she got home from the surgery, the visiting nurse noticed that Mom's heartbeat was too high, so mom was immediately sent back to the hospital. They were able to adjust/add some medications so Mom was able to go back home after a while.

We visited my parents right after Christmas. Mom wasn't feeling great while we were there. She was experiencing a lot of nausea from the medicines and not eating much as a result. She was also more tired than usual. We did get to spend some quality time with her. Here is a picture of Hannah with Grandma Charlotte during that visit.

I won't pretend to know all of the medical terms and such. At some time, mom was diagnosed with A-Fib. As I understand it, that's basically just a term for the irregular heart beat. They tried a Cardioversion on her which seemed to help for about a week. They took her off of the medicine that was causing the nausea. There was at least one day that mom was feeling almost normal. One February 9th she went back to the Heart Center and has been there ever since. She had 1 or 2 more Cardioversions which didn't work.

My sister decided to fly to Indy  to spend some time with Mom. While Bethany was there, Mom had a couple of scary episodes where she was completely unresponsive. Plus, they thought that Mom might have a Staph infection. Not only did Mom have Staph, but she had Staph Aureus. Then we found out that not only did she have Staph Aureus, but it was MRSA which is even worse. Bethany told me that I might want to consider going up to Indy.

 I drove up on Monday, Feb. 18th. I made good time and arrived in 8.5 hours. I only spent an hour or so at the hospital at that time. By this time, Mom was not very lucid.

I spent most of the day on Tuesday at the hospital. We received lots of news and most of it was not good. We saw the cardiologist, neurologist, the infectious disease doctor and cardiac surgeon. We learned that Mom had at least 2 small strokes sometime prior to Saturday. Her heart valves had been heavily damaged by the MRSA vegetation. She's going to need heart surgery, but they want to get the infection cleared up as much as possible first. Bethany was very good at writing detailed updates on Face Book.

When we got home on Tuesday, I seriously thought we were going to lose Mom within the next day or two. But on Wednesday & Thursday she showed improvement. She was able to communicate somewhat and she was using humor and sarcasm. She still has a long way to go, but I am feeling a little optimistic now.

Here's a picture of Daddy & Bethany. We had to wear these yellow paper gowns and purple gloves while in Mom's room.

Bethany & me

We spent a lot of time playing games on our electronic devices. I didn't take any close pictures of Mom out of consideration to her. (She didn't look too great!) But here's a picture of Bethany with Mom in the background.

I left on Thursday. A winter ice storm was approaching Indy and I didn't want to get stuck there. I will probably go back in a few weeks to give Daddy a break. Since Mom's communication abilities are not very good, we tried to have someone there all day as an advocate for her. Plus, there were always doctors coming in and we didn't want to miss anything.

Thank you for all the prayers, good thoughts, etc. This 45 year old is not ready to lose her Mommy!