So we have had quite the eventful Easter weekend, first visiting my family and then the Lilly’s. That is how it is usually done, Saturdays with my family since my dad has to leave sometime on Sunday during or after church, and then Sundays with Cassie’s family. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and we went to bed, perhaps a little later than we should have that night. Just after midnight, Cassie wakes me up and is panicking a little bit. She says that she cannot breathe and that her heart is pounding as if she has just completed a run. Of course that worries me – how am I supposed to know what she’s experiencing? So I jump on the iPad and look up some of those symptoms, and of course heart attack is one possible outcome, which does not sit well with me at all. What more do we need to suffer? So I talk to her about going to the emergency room, and that of course upsets her because she has been out of rehab for only a month and surely is weary of having to visit doctors so often in her lifetime. We end up deciding that it is a better decision to go and be safe rather than sorry as the cliché goes. So I hurry and throw on some clothes, help her get dressed and out to the car and away we go. I called both of the mothers to have them meet us at UVRMC. My mind is racing at what it could be. I surely hope it isn’t a heart attack, as that would be just another tragic event. But what else could it be? We arrive at the hospital around 1:30 AM, get checked in to a small room where the 4 of us barely fit. She is examined, has another IV apparatus plugged into her arm (which, in private, Cassie cried because she had not been without one for less than 2 months) and then we wait. After the echocardiogram results are in a few hours later, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her heart, which is a huge relief to all of us. They do have her setup with a heart monitor for 24 hour monitoring. Every time she feels that same or similar symptoms she is supposed to activate the monitor so that the caretakers can examine that specific moment to check for anything amiss. The heart monitor has the exact same wires and setup that she had while lying in a hospital bed.
I feel so bad for Cassie – just another thing to have to deal with on top of the lame hand, the impaired movement and the difficulty with speech. She is definitely a champion for having to deal with all of these deficiencies, that I can only imagine just weighs her down with sorrow and despair at times. We return back home and get settled again around 4 AM. At this point, she would have to arise in 2.5 hours’ time to prepare for therapy, which is not going to happen. So we sleep until 8 AM or so and I call and cancel her therapy. The doctors said she would have been fine to carry on, but she needs her rest. We took it easy that day. About a week and a half later we receive the results: normal. On occasion she feels that rush of the heart and thinks her breathing is quickening, but using the blood pressure cuff shows a normal pulse and blood pressure. Lately, those symptoms have come with less frequency. I wish all of this would be over, and it seems a monumental load to bear.
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