A Bad Week . . .

Wednesday, I got a cell call about 10:00 AM from Judie, saying please come home.  She was feeling bad.  She had an episode at her exercise group and barely got home.  I was on my way home anyway, so sort of speeded up.

I called her back and said, " Do not lie down, stay sitting up.  And take an aspirin immediately"  She did that but said she threw up the aspirin.

When I got there I piled her in her car and took her immediately to Weatherford Regional Hospital.  She was immediately entered into the ER and started treatment.  They hooked up the EKG, gave her more aspirin and took blood samples.  The EKG looked okay but the blood samples showed increases in enzymes.  A young doctor came in an looked at everything, the computer enteries, etc.  He did not say much but ordered up more blood samples.

The second set of samples showed an "alarming increase in enzymes."  I had watched her pulse go from 99 down to 80 to mid 70s.  Her normal pulse is about 62 to 65.  Her blood pressure also dropped from 145 over 80 back toward what is normal for her, or close to it.

After the second set of blood samples were read, she was admitted to the Cardiac section of the hospital.  A Cardiologist came in and said she was number three, two ahead of her but that he was going to do a Catheter later that day.

About 6:00 PM, she was rolled down to the Heart area of the hospital.  And they did a Catheter, resulted in an Angioplasty and installation of a stent into her "Widow Maker" artery.  That artery was 95% blocked, it feeds the lower anterior arteries that service the heart muscles.  Those three arteries were not impacted or effected.  Her color was immediately better.

She spent Thursday in ICU recovering, but her equilibrium was off.  The Cardiologist determined she had had to much Nitro Glycerin.  They kept her an extra day and the effects of Nitro has dissipated.  She came home Friday.

We dodged a bullet.  Her family has a history of early demise due to heart problems.  She had made it to 74 years without a problem.  Now she got the whammy.  Good news is the heart itself is undamaged.  So with the stent things should gradually return to normal.

She is fighting off post heart attack depression.  Bad day Saturday but looks like a more normal day today.

Had this been 20 years ago she would have been consigned to an early death.  Today, she will go on for years and hopefully something else will take her from this earth.