14dabucs's Blog

...  Okay, so the mother-in-law finally and reluctantly went to the hospital Friday night.  She has congestive heart failure, but she really hates hospitals and doctors.  She was not doing the best, but she wasn't doing the worst either.  We went and saw her Saturday morning and she seemed like she was doing better.  

Throughout the day she  complained about shortness of breath and her back hurting.  When we called that evening to see how her day went, she asked my husband to bring her inhaler, which he said he couldn't do.  He told her to ask a nurse for help, she was really struggling, and she was frustrated and hung up on him.   We called the nurse's station and the wonderful folks at Missouri Baptist responded immediately.  She said she was walking into the room right then and that she was sitting up and would speak with her.  The nurse said that the MIL walked from the chair to the bed and then laid down while the nurse began checking her out.

 It was a good thing too.  Throughout the day, fluid was building up around her heart until it was putting pressure on her heart like a vise.  Usually when you have a heart attack, your heart goes all bonkers and THEN stops.  Hers simply stopped.  For 14 minutes.  Her heart failed.  Her kidneys failed.  Her lungs failed. 

 Things were looking very grim.  They were working on her throughout the night.  Because she was on Coumadin and had not had her protein level checked, her blood was dangerously thin.  The doctors wanted to put a line into her heart but couldn't because it was too risky.

Sunday we went to see her and she was still unconscious, but she was starting to produce urine again.  She had pulmonary hypertension, which if I understood right, means that the blood vessels in her lungs were under a lot of pressure and blood was not flowing very well there, so it was backing up everywhere else.  The doctors thought they saw her doing a thing called "posturing," which is a kind of involuntary movement that indicates brain damage, but a CT scan showed no sign of stroke.

 Well, yesterday afternoon, my good ole 82 yr old MIL WOKE UP.  She already is acting a bit like herself again, or at least as much as you can while you are still hooked up to a ventilator and getting your food through your nose.  How she survived all this, how God watched over her and the nurse just happened to be in the room when she flatlined... it's all amazing.

 Today she was even more alert and she may be weaned off the ventilator tomorrow.  They saw she is still very weak, but she's also much stronger than they originally thought.  It's still a LONG way to go, but she's made a LOT of progress.

 Thanks to all of you for your kind thoughts and prayers.  Please keep them up.