Moj_ Patti
Early Christmas and Heart Valve Surgery
Dec 22, 2009
Santa came early at my house this year. My family gathered at my house Saturday night. Kiddle left cookies and milk out for Santa and some carrots and corn outside for the reindeer. We had a nice celebration on Sunday. As usual, Santa brought way too many toys, including a big toy “PIE-ANO” that is sure to give Mama (me) incredible headaches while entertaining Kiddle. We will be taking old toys to the Salvation Army on Christmas Eve or Saturday.
Sunday night we took Mom down to Kaiser Los Angeles (really Hollywood) for surgery. Kaiser has a little apartment building down there where we spent the night. We got her into the hospital at 5 a.m. Monday morning.
She was in surgery for five hours. They replaced her mitral and aortic valves with pig valves. (I wonder if Mom will feel the same way about bacon postop. Not that she's supposed to eat it. But being diabetic hasn't kept her away from sugar.) The doc said after 48 hours the chance for a stroke will diminish.
We got to see her for about five minutes after she went into the cardiac ICU before they shooed us out. (Her room has an impressive view of the Church of Scientology campus.) Later, we went back for about 45 minutes in the evening before we had to leave because of a nursing shift change. She is hooked up to 6 or 7 dripping bags and bottles. Lots of beeping and booping going on. She was on a ventilator last night, but that is common for this kind of surgery.
She was still out of it, but she appeared to be sleeping. She was pale, but we’ve seen worse with her anemia. Apparently, they didn’t have to give her any blood during the surgery which is wonderful.
They have an RN sitting in her room monitoring everything full time.
I came home last night. I will be working the rest of the week. But I’m getting instant messages from the three siblings pretty regularly.
Feel like total crap, but I have no leave on the books and we need to be able to pay the mortgage.
I started crying this morning when I told Kiddle's daycare lady about Grandma because Kiddle is a little moody.
We should have scheduled this for after Christmas. I had an aunt who died as a child from whooping cough at Easter in 1930 or 1931. As a result, Easter has never, ever been a big deal in my family. In fact, we do things like move on Easter Sunday. I relate this to my Aunt Rosemary's death. We never even had an Easter Lily in the house until 1998 because my mother's family got so many of them when Rosemary died.
I know in the whole scheme of things, it shouldn't matter if my mother dies at Christmas. But this is the kind of stuff you think about when you're driving home from the hospital 90 miles in the dark listening to Christmas carols on the radio, crying most of the way.
