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2007-01-11 - 8.24pm previous entry next entry
Heart attack?
I think my mum might have had a heart attack. Or something pre-heart-attack-ish. I speak to her on the phone almost every day, when I get a window - either while the boys are napping or in the evening after they have gone to bed. Sometimes if I'm having a hard afternoon with the boys then I'll get playdough out and sit with Arthur while he plays with it and phone her then. Or put Thomas the Tank Engine on and use the lull to speak to my mummy on the phone.
Today I put the boys down for their naps and went to phone my mum. We chatted about this and that for a while and about the boys, and then she said a funny thing happened yesterday in the garden. She was cutting some roses to put in a glass in the kitchen, and on her way back from that she got this pain in between her shoulder blades. I immediately thought, "Uh-oh..." because I know that shoulder-blade pain is a common referral site in WOMEN (not men) from the heart, say with heart disease or a heart attack. Anyway she then went on to say that it got so bad that she was calling my dad to come and rub her back to see if it might get better. She figured it was a muscle or something that she'd strained. She said nothing they did made her any more comfortable, and Daddy suggested that she go up and lie on the bed and she said she sort of laughed over the fact that she was acting like an old lady (she's 59 on Tuesday), because she said she didn't know if she could walk upstairs. She told me she was kind of doubled up from it. It started to ease off after half an hour and by bedtime it was all but gone. She told me about it because it seemed so weird, and she didn't get why it had gone away at bedtime, when a muscle strain probably would still be dragging on a bit. She also told me that she felt inexplicably tearful somewhere in the middle of it all - just out of the blue.
I did not mean to panic her, but I told her she needed to see a doctor straight away. She asked why and I had to tell her that it's not uncommon for women to get referral from the heart to the shoulder blades. I asked her if she had had any nausea or dizziness, or sensations in the arms, neck or chest. She said no to all. I know that the emotional aspect that she talked about is another possible "sign" of heart attack - although it's usually called "impending sense of doom". Sometimes it's just becoming unexpectedly emotional over seemingly nothing. She did say that when she breathes in deeply, she still feels discomfort through her chest. She said the pain went right through her ribcage, front to back, and that the remnant feeling is like a "band" (uh-ohhh...) around her ribcage.
It might be a muscle strain though. But she hadn't just done anything to strain herself and it came on suddenly while she wasn't exerting herself.
I know I shook her up with what I was saying. I could hear it in her voice and she told me after a while that she felt shaken up by it, and I SO didn't want to do that, but I did have to get it across that she MUST see a doctor right away. She doesn't like to complain about stuff that seems "silly" (which she had classed this as yesterday) and she gets uncomfortable about going to the doctor anyway. I made sure she would call the doctor as soon as she had spoken to me. She asked what they would do if it WASN'T a strain, and I told her I guessed they would do an ECG. As far as I recall, if she has had any sort of heart attack, it would register on the ECG - am I right? She told me I hadn't worried her overly, and that it was good that I was being sensible, but I hated having to say all that stuff. *I* would have been scared.
There is heart disease in the family. If I think too far ahead I get very anxious about my children. There's a LOT of heart disease in my side of the family, and Neil's is just as bad, so our kids have a double whammy of genes. Neil's dad had 2 heart attacks before he was 60, and his whole side of the family was riddled with them. The youngest to die of one was only 28! On my side of the family, the heart disease is on BOTH sides (both my parents) but more recent in my mum's side. Her dad died of a heart attack in his 60s. His brother died of a heart attack. Their mother died of a heart attack. You get the picture? Mummy is the next surviving person in that line, followed by her sister (both in good health up till now). Urgh.
I should be scared WITLESS. It's something I have been terribly anxious about all my life, knowing the family history of it all. But I feel oddly calm about it at the moment. Maybe because it's just a possibility and not a definite, and maybe because she hasn't keeled over with an actual heart attack yet, or maybe because it wasn't a dreadful phone call to tell me my lovely mother had a heart attack, rather it was a normal conversation where it was ME who broke the news instead of the scary scenario of hearing it from someone else. It's not a nice calm, it's like that eerie calm where you're not sure of anything, and everything feels weird. I don't like it. I don't like it. But it's better than tears or panic. I'm surprised as I always expected to react that way if ANYTHING ever happened to my mummy. She is my best friend. I don't think there is anyone I am closer to. Maybe not even Neil? It's a very different type of relationship though, so I'm not sure. I love her. The same squeezy love that I get over my children.
Anyway.
She has an appt first thing tomorrow morning to see her doctor. I hope to goodness she phones me up all embarrassed about how it's some ligament that she pulled and how I made her scared over nothing! She IS grateful already for me taking it seriously, I know that. But I hope I'm proved wrong. I reeeally feel that I am not wrong though, and THAT scares me.
I have a horrible headache and I'm tired right out, so that other stuff that is LONG overdue posting about will have to wait again. I just wanted to write about this stuff before tomorrow. Then if it's bad news I won't have to drag over how it all came about, etc.
Arthur is saying so much stuff that totally amazes me, full sentences and more adult pronounciations, and I have lots of it to write here so that it doesn't get forgotten. And Matthew is being the cutest pie. And has some issues that I meant to write about - he somehow has an abcess RIGHT where he poos from. I took him to the doctor about it yesterday and she prescribed antibiotics, ugh. I hate having to give him those. We still haven't picked them up - Neil is going to get them tonight, but I think he has fallen asleep settling Arthur down, as it's been silent in there for 40 minutes now. Better go and wake him before the whole evening disappears. I have so much cheerful stuff to write about but I don't have the heart to right now. Maybe tomorrow. Please pray for my mummy, if you pray. I am too, but I kind of feel tired out in that dept too. *sigh*
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