A post about someone else's mom....

You might remember my friend Anita, I stay at her house on Wednesday nights, so I don't have to drive back home just to sleep 6 hours and turn around and go back to work again...Her husband died about a year and a half ago...?

Anita and I have known each other for 20 years. We work in the same place (my full time job). For several years, Anita's mom, my mom, Anita and I all bowled on a bowling team together. I haven't seen Anita's mom for a few years now, but I see Anita every work day.

Well, her mom is just a couple of years older than my mom. She still lives at home, on one side of a duplex, and her son lives on the other side. Well, about 3 weeks ago, she was short of breath and her ankles were very swollen. The found fluid in her lungs, and treated her with Lasix, etc., and she came home on oxygen. She was upset because she couldn't use her gas stove while she was on the oxygen. About a week ago, they had told her that they were going to discontinue the oxygen because there was no more fluid in her lung, and she was very happy,

but...then when she went to the Dr. for a follow up visit, he thought that part of what was going on was that she had an extra heartbeat. So this past Saturday, they went in and "shocked" the heart to try to get it beating correctly. It helped, but didn't quite fix the problem, so the next day, they went in through the groin artery with a scope and found some more things wrong with her heart, and fixed those, too. Then she went to a rehab/nursing home place like my mom has before.

Then, two days ago, I guess her legs started swelling really bad again, so the nursing home sent her via ambulance to the hospital. They say her kidneys are shutting down, she isn't eating at all, and isn't talking much (and she's usually quite a talker). I can tell Anita is so scared, heck, I've been going through similar feelings recently....

The doctors and social workers have scheduled a "family meeting" for tomorrow. I have never heard of that being done. So that is scary, too.

I'm kind of feeling that Anita is going to lose her mom. It's like everything all of a sudden is going haywire. And I know that everyone has to go, but can't it wait a while?

Anyhow, I was thinking, that if you happen to be a praying type of person, maybe you could say an extra prayer for Mary Ann and Anita, too?