My Mother!

My mother went in for a hernia operation on Monday Sept. 1, 2009 and this is what happened and my account of things as the unfolded! My mother is an amazing person and I love her so much!

afternoon of 9/1/09:

I just found out that at 3:30 today(9/1/09) my mom went into a coma today after her surgery. She is at Baylor All Saints downtown 2nd floor ICU #8, I don't know if that is room #8 or bed #8. I wondered why they hadn't moved her to a room yet. and when i called my dad at 6:30 to say Alan was just leaving work and to explain why I was late in getting up there...that was when he told me.

Oh my gosh, it was just suppose to be a simple in and out thing. She had a hernia the size of a cantaloupe and she wanted to wait until after the wedding to have the surgery so they put it on the calendar for today and we really didn't think it was going to be a big deal...after all the other 7 surgeries this should have been a piece of cake. When they took her into surgery it took 3 hours, which was longer than they said that it would be, so Dad was concerned I think even though he didn't say so. Then when they came out of surgery and took her to recovery they said that instead of sending her home, they were going to keep her for 2 or 3 days because there was more damage inside when they got in there then they suspected. (you may remember that she had the whipple surgery last year and I don't know if it was some of that that was affected or not) then as they were waking her up from surgery she was complaining about a lot of pain, and So they gave her more morphine and she fell asleep and then they couldn't get her to wake up....so they turned the morphine down and then at 3:30 she went into a coma. She is getting an MRI and EEG right now. We don't know the results yet. One doctor thinks she had a stroke another thinks it’s a blood clot, and in other words they don't really know what happened, that is why they have begun the testing. As you can guess this was not at all how we expected today to go! I'll keep you up dated as I find things out!

Late night 9/1/09:

Even though she still remains in a coma state, she has opened her eyes 2 or 3 times tonight and squeezed my hand. We take this as a good sign, however when they took her down for the MRI, she started vomiting so they had to stop the test and put a tube down her nose to release the gases in her stomach. They took her back down after a couple of hours for the CatScan or EEG I don't know which and those test came back negative. They will do the MRI in the morning, but we are very encouraged.

Afternoon of 9/2/09:

O.K. the MRI came back that she has had multiple strokes and blood clots. they can't give her blood thinners which is how they usually treat this problem because it would kill her so they can't do anything basically. I think we were overly optimistic by her opening her eyes a couple of times last night. She basically remains in a coma/vegetative state (vegetative state is the Doctors words) even though she has opened her eyes and moved her left hand a couple of times....it has never been for very long and she has never spoken or done anything on the right side. She basically just goes back into the deep sleep/coma. Several times tonight she acted like she was trying to say something but could not. It seems she has trouble swallowing and it seems obvious to me that the right side of her mouth can't move. I don't know if she recognizes us because she looks so confused and scared (just my opinion) when she opens her eyes. So the doctor says that the next 24 hrs will tell the story.....how ever much she recovers by then is all she will ever recover for the rest of her life, or so the Doctor says. It is truly in the Lord's hands now!

Thanks to everyone for their prayers, calls, love and concern! Lois