Mom: Beach Bum

One year ago today Mom woke up with indigestion, nausea and a band of tightness around her chest. After waiting it out for a while, she called 911 at 4 AM. I woke up to hear her come in my room to turn on my white noise machine and shut my door. She said: "I'm going to the hospital. The ambulance is on the way." And she wasn't going to wake me up?!

She had a heart attack in the ambulance.

I called Jeannine who rushed to the hospital to be with Mom. While Jeannine kept me in the loop and stayed with my mom, my friend K spent the next few hours with me on Gchat, praying with me, listening, and just being there. I will never forget how those two friends got me through that night.

So began a very long year of medical challenges and surgeries for mom. To celebrate surviving so much and feeling much better, we went on our vacation (which I still need to blog about). Here is Mom at the beach one year later--stented, fused and decompressed--finally starting to feel like a human being again. 

In Elizabeth Berg's Open House, she writes: "You know before you know." For a few months before her heart attack, Mom had been having some episodes when she came home from her work at the library. She would be very pale, nauseated (to the point of hanging her head over the toilet), feel tightness in her chest, and need to sit and rest before she could prepare dinner. 

Even before these episodes began, I had been pushing Mom to go to a cardiologist. She was scheduled to see her PCP the day AFTER the heart attack happened to ask him about running some cardiac tests as she, too, had become concerned about her symptoms. Obviously, she never made it to that appointment.

The night before Mom's heart attack I couldn't sleep because she was again having a pretty extreme episode. I was terrified, but Mom wouldn't go to the ER. I think I already knew then that she was going to have a heart attack.

Looking back, we see that Mom had a perfect storm of events that set her up for a heart attack, including good old genetics. There is always the immense stress that comes with being a caregiver. But also to deal with years of pain she had been prescribed NSAIDs, which in turn gave her an ulcer, which in turn caused anemia, which very well may have been the cause of her heart attack.

Looking back at her blood work, we see the anemia had been present for years, but hadn't been addressed. Her cholesterol and BP had also not been properly addressed. No one said: If you are going to take an NSAID long-term, you MUST take a proton pump inhibitor at the same time.  I'm oversimplifying here, but despite us trying to be good advocates for our health, we still missed important keys. And we feel very let down by the quality of primary care she received. Had her PCP been more attentive, I truly believe she would not have had a heart attack at 65.

Why am I writing all of this? Because Mom fit the classic profile of a woman about to have a heart attack. She had all of the symptoms that women have: indigestion, nausea, chest tightness. 

I knew before I knew. And by then, it was too late. 

Today, I'm grateful that mom is here with me every day because she is the person I cherish and love more than anyone in the world. If you, or someone you love, is having these symptoms or history, please trust your gut, take it seriously, and fire your PCP if they are as negligent as Mom's was. 

We are so fortunate for the way the events did play out. Mom called the ambulance in the nick of time. We had a cath lab at the our hospital. Her surgery was delayed instead of her probably having a heart attack on the table. We discovered and treated her ulcer. And she can now aggressively treat her cholesterol and BP. She was able to have successful surgeries on her neck and back.

I still have nightmares about something happening to Mom. It is hard to explain how that day one year ago changed my world. 

I love you Mom!

Blessings,

Emily