Praying For My Mom

My sister has just taken my Mom to the ER. She had a fainting spell shortly after getting out of the shower this evening. She may have also had a seizure for as I held her in my arms trying to keep her from sliding to the floor she was trembling and then it went beyond trembling to something more jerky.

My sister was out working in the yard while I was supervising her shower. Supervising makes it sound way more involved then it is now as for the last several weeks all she needs is for one of us to be waiting in the hall in case she calls for help. Help can be as simple as reaching in to turn on the fan.

This time she was combing her wet hair in front of the sink and complained to me she was exhausted. Which is normal. The shower procedure tends to wear her out and she needs to rest afterwards. Then she was exiting the bathroom with her walker but didn't get all the way through the door. Instead she backed up without the walker and leaned against the sink counter. She was real quiet and I asked "Are you OK Mom?" and she said "No." And that's when her breathing became heavy and strained.

I had to move the walker to get past it. I put my arm around her waist and she leaned her head on my chest as she said, "I feel like I'm going to faint." I called to my nephew to go get his Mom. And that's when the trembling began that escalate quickly to something more than trembling.

Just as the trembling/jerks stopped my sister arrived and she stood on the other side of Mom and took some of the weight. She asked Mom if her shower had been extra hot. And Mom said "No." So she was responding to our questions at that moment. My sister asked her son to get this small chair out of the office across the hall and he brought to directly in front of the bathroom door. She asked Mom if we could help her walk to that chair---about three steps away--and Mom agreed. But after taking a single step she started to slide out of our arms towards the floor. The two of us together could not hold her up.

We laid her on the floor across the threshold with her legs in the bathroom and her head and shoulders in the hall. She was unconscious. My sister called to her son to call 911. He brought her the phone. He was nervous about what to say. He's fourteen. So she dialed. About the time she was saying into the phone that she needed an ambulance Mom woke up and said "No I don't." and the whole time my sister was answering their questions Mom was saying over and over. "I'm fine now. I don't need an ambulance."

But the paramedics came anyway. They took her BP and blood sugar. Nothing alarming there. She still resisted going with them. But when my sister suggested that she drive her and the paramedics acknowledged that there would be no ambulance charge in that case, Mom acquiesced. So I suppose her resistance was more about the cost of the ambulance ride. She is still coming to terms with the cost of the multiple ambulance rides she was given in California last November and December after her fall which broke her hip and the resulting hip surgery followed by a mild stroke.

The paramedics helped my sister walk Mom to the car. I didn't know what to do with myself after the door shut. I was pacing the floor and starting to hyperventilate. I figured if I didn't want another ambulance to have to be called to this address this night I had better find something to do besides fret myself into a panic attack.

Writing helps me process so I thought to go to my journal but then changed my mind and went straight to my blog instead.