Open heart surgery

I have been at a hospital for two days. Not for me, but my mother. She went to a doctor to see about having surgery for her shoulders (she no longer has the ball part of her humerus that fits into the socket - and that affects both arms). They had done a stress test to check her heart to see of it was strong enough to handle the surgery... and found something questionable. She went to her heart doctor right away with it and he did a catheterization. Lo and behold, they found 3 blocked arteries - 85%, 95% and 95%. Yikes. They scheduled her for open heart surgery for one week later. That was yesterday.

I never knew how stressful waiting was... but it was hard to be sitting around waiting to hear something (anything) about how she was doing. They got started late on her, but around 3 pm the doctor came out and confirmed that she got through the operation fine and they had no trouble. However, when they opened her up, they found she had to have 4 bypasses, not just one. She had been a walking time bomb.

She had always complained about how tired she was, and she was always out of breath from walking or doing any kind of exertion. No one suspected it was a problem with her heart. My mother was lucky to have found this out BEFORE she'd had a heart attack.

I can't go see her today or tomorrow, but I'll try to go up on Saturday and Sunday. I have to have Kenzie with me, but they do not let any child under 14 in the SICU. Hopefully, there will be a friend or relative who will come up, or maybe there will be someone who can watch Kenzie while I go in for 5 minutes to see her. (My husband does taxes and this is CRUNCH time... I'll be spending the weekend at my mother's house while he works at getting out tax returns.)

Although she got out of the surgery okay, the next few days will tell if things are going to turn around for her. The tricky part is to take her off of the ventilator and the medications they are giving her and see if she can do well. I am praying that her body is strong enough and she is willing to do whatever it takes to get herself going again.