Sunday, May 31, 2009

Another day, another new Mom development

Mom's new team of docs here in Internal Medicine dept. at Brigham's have gotten cardiologists involved with how to asess the danger of that 8-second lapse she had last night. After the stroke, all her doctors have tried medications in many different combinations to control her a-fib but mom's heart rhythm has not found the stability needed in order to move forward with her rehab plan. After assessing her case today, the team of cardiologists have deemed mom a good candidate for a pacemaker.

The operation will take place tomorrow. I am so excited about this. We've been in "officially" limbo since Saturday morning, but it's really felt more like we've been in limbo since Friday late afternoon when we originally left Brigham's for Spaulding. Nancy, Matt and I were filled with excitement and anticipation for her rehab, but it was tempered by worries and real concerns about her previously unstable heartbeat, which had been sort of dubiously "stable" all day Friday.

The whole ordeal of mom's a-fib putting an immediate yield to the rehab plans -- the forced mental shift of coming back to Brigham's -- a wide U-turn -- moving two spaces backwards on the big board game of the whole experience of the stroke aftermath -- it's been deflating to be honest. With no less belief that my mom will improve with aggressive therapy, no doubts about her complete commitment to her recovery and with the total belief that she will use every ounce of juice she has to recover her mind and body as much as she possibly can, it's still a bummer to have to "Plan B" her when we want to get "Plan A" in action ASAP! So, with today's developments, though the future is never certain for anything and this is no diferent, I'm just so happy that we are making progress and now have a viable,  calculable, more realistic tool to get mom back into progress mode, moving forward.

Speaking of those little setbacks and how, no matter what they are, they can sometimes make you feel  deflated when you were wishing for a different outcome, I have to give a big shout-out to "Sister Power"! Nancy helped me laugh a lot during our ER day on Saturday. While we were held captive for four hours in mom's curtain-walled square, we did a goofy craft project that Nancy bought for us in the Gift Shop, we choked back laughter over the patient next-door's outrageous requests and complaints (seriously, a writer for "ER" could not have crafted a more perfect dialogue), and we chuckled over a couple of other things which I dare not mention here! If you ever find yourself in the position of hanging out in an emergency room for four hours on a Saturday taking care of your poor mom, make sure you have a funny sister with you! :)

1 comment:

  1. Me? Funny? Heehee.

    "Nurse..., Nurse...NURSE!!! Can I get a sandwich and a cup of coffee?"

    OMG, hysterical! Even better was...

    "Nurse....Nurse....NURSE!!! Can I have a cigarette? I'll just have one, isn't there a room downstairs? PLEASE, please???"

    The ER was definitely entertaining.

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