I was 25, in my second year of teaching and had recently broken up with a psychotic boyfriend. My mom had been nothing but stressed about this relationship I was in and she was so happy to see that I had finally ended it. I was about to embark on a spring break trip to Florida with my girlfriends and had actually just come home from a night out to dinner.
I walked into the home I shared with my two roommates to see the answering machine blinking. I was just getting ready to push the buttons, because I had so many messages, I was curious to see who had called me so many times. The phone rang just as I was about to listen to the first message. It was my sister-in-law. She sounded a bit frantic and asked me where I had been and why I hadn’t called. I explained that I was just getting home to all of these messages. This is when she told me, “Kaye, your mom is in the hospital. She collapsed today when she and your Dad were at a friend’s house. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital here.” I immediately thought we had lost her.
Tears streamed down my face as I asked that question. Thank goodness, Mom had not died. She had, however, suffered from an arrhythmia, where her heart was beating too fast and she collapsed. I remember thinking, “This is my mom; she isn’t supposed to get sick.” Then I had to remind myself that this is how her heart disease is, you just never know what can happen.
She had been so healthy for so long, that our entire family was completely unprepared. I went to see mom. Since she was in our local city’s hospital and she needed to be seen at the Mayo Clinic they were preparing to transfer her there by ambulance. The Mayo Clinic would be inserting a pacemaker and a defibrillator into her chest. This would regulate any abnormal heartbeats she may have, whether it be too fast or too slow.
My mom was, as always, in good spirits. It was so nice to hug her and kiss her. My entire family went to the Mayo Clinic this time to be with her. The procedures went well and we all were greatly assured that she had been given a second chance at life, and the pacemaker and defibrillator were her built in life-saver from then on.
Again, our family went along with life like we normally would. Mom was home, she was healthy and happy and things were moving along like they should as the years passed. It was about four years later that Mom began experiencing shortness of breath and tiredness just going up the stairs. She knew that something was wrong, but she kept it from her children. It wasn’t until shortly before a trip to the Mayo Clinic for her routine testing that she broke the news to her children. It was then she told us that she didn’t think she would live to see 60, and she was already 53!
What news did she break to us? Read my next blog in the series, Mom’s Journey to a Heart Transplant to find out!