The weekend before her EKG appointment I decided to go and pick her up and bring her to our place for the night.\u00a0 She\u2019d 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.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t seen her in a few weeks but we talked on the phone at least once a week.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I opened the door to the entry and Mom was at the top of the stairs putting on her shoes.\u00a0 Her breathing was different.\u00a0 I had never heard her like this before.\u00a0 She had never had asthma or any breathing issues that I knew of.\u00a0 I asked her if she was okay.\u00a0 She said yes but she could hardly get the word out.\u00a0 I said, \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re okay.\u00a0 Is there something I can do?\u00a0 Do you need to go to the ER?\u201d\u00a0 She insisted that she was fine.\u00a0 That this had started happening when she bent down to pick something up or put on her shoes.\u00a0 Meanwhile I was looking across the street at the hospital and back at her in a panic.\u00a0 Wondering what I should do.\u00a0 Do I take her to my house or to the hospital?\u00a0\u00a0 Again she insisted that she was fine.\u00a0 So I took her to our house.\u00a0 I felt sick with panic.\u00a0 My mind was racing trying to figure out what was wrong.\u00a0 That evening I took her out shopping and she seemed okay but walked at such a slow pace I got even more concerned.\u00a0\u00a0 She didn\u2019t have another episode at our house but I knew something was wrong.\u00a0 I started doing research online that night.\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe everything I read but I like to use it as a starting point for questions.\u00a0 I felt so helpless and I needed to feel like I was doing something.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I saw the word cancer in my early research but ignored it because that just didn\u2019t seem possible.\u00a0 There was a very low instance of cancer in my Mom\u2019s family so genetically speaking it wasn\u2019t top of my mind.\u00a0 And she was going for regular mammograms etc.<\/p>\n
I talked to my Mom before her appointment and she said she wasn\u2019t going to mention her breathing issue. I knew it was out of fear of what would be found and I didn\u2019t blame her for being scared.\u00a0 But I begged her to tell the doctor.\u00a0 I knew something was wrong.\u00a0 I also knew that she thought I was being pushy and controlling but I didn\u2019t care. \u00a0\u00a0This was too important.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I took the day off from work to go with her.\u00a0 I just had no idea what to expect.\u00a0 Right after the x-ray the doctor requested to see her.\u00a0 That couldn\u2019t be good.\u00a0 He kindly explained why she was unable to breath.\u00a0 She had a litre and a half of fluid around her lungs.\u00a0 And that it would have to be drawn off that day.\u00a0 Well, the thought of having a giant needle put in through your back to drain fluid off your lungs had me feeling dizzy.\u00a0 Mom just said, \u201cI\u2019ll be fine.\u00a0 Wait for me in the waiting room.\u00a0 The doctor knows what he\u2019s doing.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 What else was she hiding? \u00a0I took Mom home and hated to leave her.\u00a0 They were going to be testing the fluid that they had taken.\u00a0 The roller coaster had begun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The weekend before her EKG appointment I decided to go and pick her up and bring her to our place for the night.\u00a0 She\u2019d only been to our new house once and that was when we moving in a few … Continue reading