weekend #71 with david... and about my mom

Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009 | 8:44 PM

the weekend before last, i went to corvallis to visit david. i went down on friday, bringing with me a pizza from one of our favorite pizza places, since there is no good pizza in corvallis.

on saturday, we didn't do too much. we both slept late, and it was already about 4 by the time i was ready to go to fred meyer. i had to go there to deposit a check in my bank account and then take the money out so i could have some more money while i was there. when we arrived at the store, i realized that i'd forgotten my card, so we just bought some food and went back to his place.

it was getting dark when we got back, so we stayed in the rest of the day, since we didn't need to go out for food and david needed to do homework.

on sunday, we went back to fred meyer with my card, and then bicycled all the way to his bank, which is much farther away than fred meyer. we ended up going to a book store downtown and then to the library before getting back to his place. we had been out bicycling around for several hours.

i took a shower while he did homework, and then we sat on his little couch to watch a tv show on his laptop. it was during this show that i got a call from my dad.

he told me that my mom was in the hospital with fluid in her lungs and something wrong with her heart. he didn't know many details. he said he would pick me up early the next day to go see her.

i was worried, so we didn't watch the rest of the show. david tried to comfort me. i thought that since she was in the hospital where they would take care of her, things would turn out to be ok. trying to keep my mind off of it, i decided to stick with our plans to go to mcmenamins that night.

my dad called me on monday morning when he was abour an hour away. i quickly packed up my things. when he arrived, he told me that there was heart damage, but still didn't know many details. we headed straight to the hospital without going home first, which took about an hour and a half or so.

when we were about a half hour away, my mom called and told us that only 10% of her heart was working. i began to cry. i tried to hold myself together when we entered the hospital, but when we made it to her room, i started crying even more. this caused my mom to start crying. we cried until my dad came back from the bathroom and started talking all positive like.

she ended up staying there until friday, with my dad and i visiting her every day. we learned more about her condition as her stay lengthened. the previously mentioned 10% was how much blood her heart was pumping. normal is around 50%. they worked with different drugs to find the right combination of a drug to keep her blood pressure what it should be, and a drug to enable the heart to possibly slowly repair itself.

the doctors weren't able to figure out why this happened. apparently she had scarlet fever as a baby, which slightly damaged a valve in her heart. they weren't saying that this is what caused it though. so i guess we just don't know.

now she is back home trying to get stronger. she won't be able to go back to work for a long time, if ever. she has to keep her sodium intake very low, and can't drink more than 64 ounces of water a day. her doctor visits will be frequent. but at least she's still around.

so i guess this thanksgiving day i am pretty thankful to have my mom here with us. i was really scared.

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