Mom’s heart transplant journey left off with her being told of the news that she needed open-heart surgery. I was in fifth grade, I guess that would make me around ten years old. My mom was 34. Not only was she 34, she was also the mom to two children: myself, and my older brother, who was 12 at the time.
Faced with having major surgery at such a young age, and faced with the real possibility that something awful could happen, she prepared my brother and I as much as possible. I do remember asking her, “Mommy, could you die?” She was completely honest and admitted that she very well could. This was a major surgery in 1980; it was to last six hours or more.
My grandma came to stay with us while my parents made yet another trip to Mayo. The cardiologists who treat my mom at the Mayo Clinic are experts in the HCM (Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy) field. Because HCM is a very misunderstood heart condition, it is important to find an expert and my mom received that at Mayo. Therefore, since her diagnosis she has traveled to Rochester, MN to be seen.
My parents traveled to Mayo, this time planning on being gone for many weeks. I remember the day of the surgery, my mom calling to say she loved us and she would talk to us as soon as she could. I went to school, and to this day, I have never forgotten the compassion my fifth grade teacher showed me. She was well aware what was happening with my family and at precisely the time my mom’s surgery was to have been starting, she asked our entire class to please bow their heads and pray for my mom. It was something that I am sure, she could have gotten in big trouble for, but you know what, at the time, and still to this day, I look back on that exact moment and get tears in my eyes.
My mom had her open-heart surgery that day. The doctor’s were able to remove the obstruction in an incredibly long and tedious surgery. It was a long time before my brother or I were able to speak to Mom, as she was in intensive care, hooked up to machines and tube down her throat breathing for her. My dad gave us periodic updates on how she was doing.
I can’t begin to tell you, even after all of these years, how sweet it was when Mom finally woke up and was able to breathe on her own and call my brother and me. It was many weeks; I want to say over two, before Mom was able to come home from the Mayo Clinic.
She recovered, although it was painful. They have to break your sternum to get to your heart and then it was wired back together inside her chest. It couldn’t have been easy, but as usual, my mom never let on that she was tired or in pain. She was just mom and she was home with her kids and life was good.
Life went along normally for several years. Mom took her medications, had routine testing done at Mayo and had my brother and I tested every three years for the condition. Honestly, her heart condition pretty much became a non-issue with our family. It was a fact of life, but it really wasn’t anything we worried about or talked too much about. I think we took it for granted, until that fateful day when I got the call. I was 25 years old, and it literally shook my world.
Want to know what happened? Read tomorrow’s Mom’s Journey to a Heart Transplant to find out…..