"Can't Sleep -- clowns will eat me."

Good thoughts needed

This is my mother. Everyone say "Hi, Mushi's mom!" This photo is from January 1998. I was so thin then, and my hair was long and thick and curly. Sigh. But I digress. Enough about me.

Back in August 2003, as a friend of mine said, the "warrantee on my mother's parts stared to expire." She was in the hospital at least 9 times within 18 months for a variety of ailments. There was the pneumonia brought on by the fact she had a back injury and wasn't mobile (that happens in older people. While in the hospital, the doctors discovered she had leaky heart valves and diabetes. They wanted to do back surgery on her but needed to wait for the pneumonia to clear up. While they were waiting for her pneumonia to clear, my mother fell and broke her hip. While in the hospital, the doctors discovered that the arteries in her neck were both clogged, so they had to "roto-rooter" her arteries, one at a time. While they did the second surgery on her neck arteries, the doctors nicked her vocal chords, so she sounded like she had laryngitis for about six months. She finally got her voice back and she had a bowel obstruction and was back in the hospital.

It's been about three years since the last time my mother was in the hospital. She hates doctors -- who could blame her?

However, she wasn't feeling well yesterday morning so my brother took her to the hospital. Turns out, the pneumonia was back. While doing the blood work on her, the doctors discovered that she had had a heart attack on Friday (the night that, according to my father, she had been puking and had a few other symptoms of a heart attack).

The doctors have decided to keep my mother in the hospital so that the pneumonia can clear up and so that they can monitor her heart. They want to do an angiogram on Thursday and if it is bad, then they do bypass surgery. Best case scenario, they put a stent in. Worst case: bypass surgery. Extreme worse case...well, I don't want to think about it.

My mother is only 71. She and my father have been together since they were 18; they've been married 48 years. She's very young still. She hasn't even seen her only daughter get married (no -- that is not a spoiler -- I am talking that hopefully one day I WILL get married. But again, I digress).

I am so worried. I feel I need to fly out there and be with my mother, but of course, she and my father are saying "Don't worry, stay in New York."

So I am freaked. With every reason.

I know that prayer and good thoughts do work wonders, so if anyone of you can spare it, please, send any good thoughts to my mother.

Thanks so much.

Tags: heart attack, mother