Mom should return home

My mother should be out of rehab by the time you read this. No, she isn’t a drug addict or an alcoholic. She had a heart attack.
We were on our way home from a wonderful three-week visit with the grandchildren when we received a call from my sister-in-law telling us she was following the ambulance to the hospital. They thought my mother had had a stroke.
The rest of the trip was fill with worry and apprehension. This was not alleviated by the flat tire we got a few miles past Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The tire was not just flat, it was shredded. Now I know what the inside of a tire looks like.
The car would shudder and wobble every time a vehicle whizzed by and we were afraid that if we tried to change the tire we would be casualties of the road. A state trooper, M. Davies, came within 10 minutes of our 911 call. As a result of his lights, traffic moved over enough so that we were out of the air flow and we put the spare tire on in place of the shredded one.
The spare appeared almost flat but it held enough air to get us to an exit. While my husband was attempting to add air to the spare he looked up and saw a tire store across the road. The place specialized in truck tires but happened to have one to fit our car. We were relieved when we finally pulled into our own driveway several long hours later.
The next morning when we looked out the window, the new tire was flat. My husband is getting a lot of practice changing tires. A local tire center fixed the slow leak in the valve stem and I was on the way to Richmond to the hospital.
When I arrived Mom looked awful. I was told she had a stroke. Then another doctor came in and said she had a heart attack and a stroke. The next day the neurologist said no stroke, just a heart attack. He said that her symptoms of numbness on the left side had been caused by her high blood pressure and the heart attack. He said she didn’t have a stroke, not then, not ever.
I think that part of the reason they originally thought she had a stroke was that her face still droops from the Bell’s Palsy she had several years ago. Bell’s Palsy is a malfunction of the facial nerve which controls the muscles of the face. It is diagnosed when they can’t find a definite cause for the problem. Sometimes it clears up on its own and sometimes there are lasting effects, as happened with my mom. Plus, since she is extremely hard of hearing her speech has never been perfect.
The next day she looked so much better. Most of the numbness was gone and by the end of the day she was able to walk down the hall a bit. The following day she had a heart cath to determine the extent of the damage to her heart and she looked and felt awful once again.
The neurologist said that she had some scarring on her brain from years of uncontrolled high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar. She is not diabetic but her sugar runs higher than they prefer it to be. He repeated his finding of no stoke. He said that if blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar levels are controlled then adverse effects can be avoided.
By the middle of the week she was well enough to be sent to rehab to regain sufficient strength to return home. We are awaiting the results of her medical evaluation as I write.
It has been a tumultuous week. We were scared, relieved and worried. Having a parent in the hospital reminds us that tomorrow is promised to no one. We must make the best of the time we are given. With luck, my mother will be back in her own home by the time you read this and life will return to normal. We just need to get her through rehab first.[[In-content Ad]]