The Mom Report

We had a bit of a mom scare this weekend.

Many of you know that my mom has been fighting lung cancer for about 3 years. She has had a few hospitalizations this year. Last week, Wednesday, I believe, she went into the hospital with low blood oxygen and low blood pressure. She was in the ICU for a couple of days, but, by the weekend, was on a regular floor. Saturday my dad called to tell us to come down (the hospital is about an hour south of us) because she was being put back into the ICU. She had aspirated her lunch, effectively blocking her bronchi (with shrimp, no less!)

The doctor wanted to intubate her and suction her lungs. One of her most strident declarations for the past three years has been, "No tubes down my throat!" This happened at the beginning, when she was very sick after completing radiation treatments, and she didn't want it to happen again. But the doctor told him that this would save her life, not extend it, so my dad agreed.

She has been sedated since Saturday afternoon. As they increase and reduce the sedation, she has been asleep most of the time and at varying levels of wakefulness at others. Whenever she was awake, she would try to pull the ventilator tube out, so she had to have her hands restrained. It was awful.

But today we got the happy news that the tubes had been removed and she was breathing on her own! By the time we were able to get away from here and get down there, late this afternoon, she was sitting up in bed, awake and conscious. She was still feeling some effects of the sedation, so she didn't always make sense...but she does that sometimes without sedation, so, there ya go!

It was so good to see her eyes open and have her be mostly normal. She did not, however, appreciate the pureed food that they're feeding her now...