The weekend before her EKG appointment I decided to go and pick her up and bring her to our place for the night. She’d only been to our new house once and that was when we moving in a few months earlier so I wanted her to come see it unpacked. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks but we talked on the phone at least once a week.
My Mom lived on the upper floor of a four-plex. There was an outside door with a small entry and then 3 steps up to her apartment door. I opened the door to the entry and Mom was at the top of the stairs putting on her shoes. Her breathing was different. I had never heard her like this before. She had never had asthma or any breathing issues that I knew of. I asked her if she was okay. She said yes but she could hardly get the word out. I said, “I don’t think you’re okay. Is there something I can do? Do you need to go to the ER?” She insisted that she was fine. That this had started happening when she bent down to pick something up or put on her shoes. Meanwhile I was looking across the street at the hospital and back at her in a panic. Wondering what I should do. Do I take her to my house or to the hospital? Again she insisted that she was fine. So I took her to our house. I felt sick with panic. My mind was racing trying to figure out what was wrong. That evening I took her out shopping and she seemed okay but walked at such a slow pace I got even more concerned. She didn’t have another episode at our house but I knew something was wrong. I started doing research online that night. I don’t believe everything I read but I like to use it as a starting point for questions. I felt so helpless and I needed to feel like I was doing something. Mom had Sarcoidosis of the lung, a nasty virus that can cause hardening of the lung over a long period of time, about 20 years before and it caused her lung infections every once in a while so I thought it might have something to do with that. I saw the word cancer in my early research but ignored it because that just didn’t seem possible. There was a very low instance of cancer in my Mom’s family so genetically speaking it wasn’t top of my mind. And she was going for regular mammograms etc.
I talked to my Mom before her appointment and she said she wasn’t going to mention her breathing issue. I knew it was out of fear of what would be found and I didn’t blame her for being scared. But I begged her to tell the doctor. I knew something was wrong. I also knew that she thought I was being pushy and controlling but I didn’t care. This was too important.
My sister went with my Mom and she did tell her doctor about her breathing on that Wednesday and a chest x-ray was ordered for that Friday. I took the day off from work to go with her. I just had no idea what to expect. Right after the x-ray the doctor requested to see her. That couldn’t be good. He kindly explained why she was unable to breath. She had a litre and a half of fluid around her lungs. And that it would have to be drawn off that day. Well, the thought of having a giant needle put in through your back to drain fluid off your lungs had me feeling dizzy. Mom just said, “I’ll be fine. Wait for me in the waiting room. The doctor knows what he’s doing.” This fluid had been building up for at least a month; the fact that she had hid this from my sister and I really scared me. What else was she hiding? I took Mom home and hated to leave her. They were going to be testing the fluid that they had taken. The roller coaster had begun.