Today�s second entry.
11:10 a.m.
I was up early this morning checking my buddy list when I got a phone call from my brother in Israel. He told me that our mother was in the hospital after having a heart attack and gave me the number so I could call her. Our brother who lives in Toronto had called him, and asked him to relay the message on to me. This is the brother who has not spoken to me in four years, the one who acted as though the chair next to my husband at the table we shared at last summer�s wedding was vacant, the one whose wife treats me as though I were a convicted felon, the one I have given plenty of opportunities to put the past behind us and get on with our lives. I wondered what he would do if it came down to a crisis concerning our mother, and I guess I have my answer. Or else he really doesn�t consider it a crisis.
But, back to my mom. She arrived home from a three-week visit to my other brother in Israel on Saturday and apparently picked up some kind of gastrointestinal-tract virus towards the end that gave her diarrhea. She also experienced uncomfortable sensations in her arms which she thought might be angina, except that it was in both arms and angina usually only affects the left side, so she attributed it to the fact that she�d run out of her arthritis medicine. Her flight home was uneventful, but upon her arrival at the airport, she ended up walking all over the terminal looking for the limousines (an 85-year-old woman carrying luggage, wouldn�t you know), and when I spoke to her on Monday she was still exhausted from that ordeal.
Well, she didn�t feel �right� for the rest of the day, and on Tuesday evening the pains in her arms started again, this time radiating into her back and chest and she figured it was time to call 911, so she did. They had an ambulance over there within 10 minutes, and she spent the next several hours at the hospital having blood taken, being injected with blood thinners, and generally monitored. The staff seem to think she is out of any immediate danger, but she is feeling rather weak. I just spent a half-hour on the phone with her and she was pretty tired by the end.
This has left me feeling very freaked out. Almost exactly four years ago my dad went into the hospital for hip-replacement surgery and died of a massive coronary the next morning. I rushed to be at my mother�s side, but couldn�t stay past a couple of days since Hubby and I were heading out to Calgary later that week. And this time around my mother is in the hospital with a heart attack and Hubby and I are heading out to Calgary on Tuesday. Talk about feeling d�j� vu.
She is scheduled to visit here in a couple of weeks, arriving on Little Princess� 18th birthday on May 23. I wouldn�t blame her if she cancelled the visit, and she is quite prepared to do that even if she doesn�t get her train ticket refunded. Hopefully she will feel strong enough to come out here, but I won�t press her; she has to do what feels right.
I had to take the Subaru into the garage to have the tires changed (no more snow, please) this morning, and this afternoon the Volvo goes in for that and a tuneup. It is such an old car now, 14 years, and it really feels and sounds like one. It squeaks and mutters, the bounce has gone out of its suspension, the rubber gaskets are disintegrating and the rear wheel wells are rusty. But apart from that, it�s still a good car. The Volvo 240DL is also a handsome vehicle, and it still looks good. We�re planning on getting that rust fixed this summer, and I guess we�ll hold onto it for a few more years.
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