Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Because God evidently doesn't think we have enough stress....

MIL is in the hospital. We took her to the ER at 3am on Monday morning, as she was having chest pains. They took her by ambulance to Borgess Hospital in Kzoo, and they did a heart cath. Turns out, she has three major blockages and and needs bypass surgery.

So now the poor woman has to deal with both dialysis and having her chest cracked open on Friday. She is taking it amazingly well. She is of course scared, but she has accepted that it has to be done and there is not a whole lot she can do about it.

This is a major deja vu for me--takes me back to when ES was in T-town and had her leg amputated. Drove 45 miles every day after work to go see her while she was in the hospital. Guess how far Kzoo is from here? Yup, just over 45 miles. At least this time, Bud and I are dealing with it together. When ES was int he hospital, if you were a follower of the other blog, the Self-Sustaining Kitchen( http://bamagalskitchen.blogspot.com/ --it is still up and running--go there for a lot of background and more on this storyline), you know that right after ES had the amputation, Bud had to rush to Michigan because his mom had had a heart attack, and his dad was in the hospital as well...not a pleasant time in our lives to say the least.

Mom is scheduled to have surgery on Friday, and Bud and I have been operating on little to no sleep; calling friends and family to keep them updated; trying to not have meltdown. I just did all the homework for one of my classes in record speed. My brain is thoroughly fried.

MIL, ever the worrier, is focusing not on her pending surgery, but rather on the fact that she was supposed to get her car serviced on Friday, was supposed to meet a friend for lunch this week, and oh, yeah, Peanut, the Jekyll-Hyde dog, was supposed to go get her annual booster shots. Not to mention that she had a ton of crafting projects she was working on that she had planned on finishing...gotta love her. She is obsessive-compulsive-and-very-likely-insane.

Keep her in your thoughts, everyone--all three of you intrepid followers!

3 comments:

  1. Evidently you're right about God...but take comfort in that you're not alone. God seems to enjoy dealing out stress to some people..some say he doesn't give you anything you can't handle. At least in your case, I think you handle it all quite well..

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  2. ha ha ha ha I had to google "intrepid" to understand what you meant!

    Anyway glad you guys are there! I called mom last night before she went in to surgery (yr morning) and she kept talking about her craft work. I guess it's her way of not focusing on the opt.

    Just hope you guys can catch some rest in the midst of the running around. Much love from Malaysia! XOXO

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  3. Hi Sis-in-law! Thanks for calling MIL--it really surprised her and help distract her for a while.

    To all: an update. MIL, as I expected, is doing well after surgery. We were told she needed a triple bypass, and that it would take 4-6 hours; she ended up only needing a double bypass, and it only took two and a 1/2 hours.

    We were told it would take anywhere from 1 hour to an hour and a half for her to be out of anesthesia enough for us to see her--it only took 30 minutes.

    She was still asleep and couldn't open her eyes, and she had a ventillator tube down her throat still, so we left her to rest in the CICU. Bud called around midnight to see how she was doing. The nurse said they had already taken out the tube and that she had been sitting up on the side of her bed (we were told the tube wouldn't come out until tomorrow, and that she most likely would sleep through the night).

    I tell ya, she is going to outlive us all...

    ReplyDelete

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