Whirlwind

That's definitely what the last 3 weeks have felt like, for sure.  Christmas and the days surrounding it are always busy, but for our family, it was the week after Christmas that got crazy.

We had all been battling cold/flu symptoms while we were at Mom and Dad's the week of Christmas, and my mom was the last to get it.  By the time we left on Monday evening to go back to the apartment, Mom was very sore, nauseated and just overall uncomfortable.  I talked to my dad the following morning and my mother had thrown up all night.  By halfway through Tuesday afternoon, she was unable to hold down anything whatsoever, and her doctor advised my dad that they should get her to the hospital immediately, by ambulance if possible.  They got into the ER and started IV therapy at 4pm.  After convincing the ER doctor that it wasn't going to be wise to send Mom home to try and tough it out, she was finally admitted and moved to a room around 2:30 am Wednesday morning.  

The next week was absolutely insane.  Mom was sure she almost passed on three or four times Thursday night, finally started to feel some better over the weekend after having had a PICC line placed for IV therapy and nutrition feeding, was supposed to come home on Tuesday but was stopped after finding super high creatine levels in a routine blood draw.  Wednesday was looking better as far as coming home, but around 6:30 am on Wednesday, a technician came in to give Mom her morning meds and check her vitals and asked Mom if her arm had been as big as it was since they put in her PICC line early in the week.  Mom was still only half awake, but she reached over to feel of her arm and found it was twice it's normal size from wrist to shoulder.  She was rushed downstairs for a scan.  The results?  A blood clot inside the PICC line, quite close to the end of the line.  All IV therapy was immediately terminated to keep the blood clot from being pushed through the line and into her blood stream.  She was started on injections to thin her blood and hopefully dissolve the blood clot, however, the clot was far enough into the PICC line that it would not dissolve.  A PICC line is not an easy thing to have inserted and so when the line that took 6 sticks in two different sites to finally get inserted had to be pulled, we were all a bit concerned.  

Today, Mom is home.  She is still extremely weak and exhausted, but she is home.  Now we pray and wait for her stomach to wake up completely and pray that no more hospital visits are needed.  God was definitely on the scene in that hospital or we wouldn't have her home now.