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Christmas night, my mom went to bed feeling "off". She looked pale during the day and decided to call it a night a little earlier. During the night, she found herself experiencing excruciating pain in the left side of her neck and it spread up into her face and into her ear. By the time morning rolled around, she went upstairs and asked my dad to take her to the ER. This is a little terrifying because Mom has the highest pain tolerance of anyone I know. She never EVER asks to be taken to the doctors, much less the ER. The doctors believed it was a muscle spasm and gave mom muscle relaxants. She came home, finding a tiny bit of relief; however, she woke up the next day in unbearable pain. Another trip to the ER found her with steroids and back home. A few days later, still fighting pain, a trip to the doctor told her that he believed it was nerval. He gave her a prescription which granted her four hours of being pain free--which was amazing for her. I came home after work to find her talking and eating, two things which she had barely been able to do for a week. We slept well that night, believing everything to be taken care of.
Thursday morning, coincidentally being the day I have off during the week, found her trying to do "normal things". When I came down for breakfast, she was sitting at the table with her face in her hands because she was having an episode (unbearable pain from 10-30 seconds). She looked very pale as we were talking. I turned to grab some coffee and I heard something move. I turned around to see my mom fall out of her chair onto the floor, not moving. I thought she was having a stroke and I touched her but she didn't do anything. I ran (yelling) to get my dad upstairs, and by the time we were back, she had come to and didn't remember anything. We went immediately to the ER. My mom passed out three times between the ER waiting room and getting a stretcher--once in the examination room. When they hooked her up to the monitors, the nurses noticed that every time her pain came her heart DROPPED. I don't mean just like 20 bpm. I mean like 60-70. She went from 100-10 in a second. As soon as they had her on a bed, they hooked her up to defibrillators. My mom proceeded to flat-line three times...once for 13 seconds.
I don't think I know how to articulate that feeling of watching your mom suddenly have her heart stop in front of your eyes. We brought her in with face pain and they were about to resuscitate her.
She came back, right as the nurses were about to pace her, and they quickly made the decision to take her into surgery for a temporary pace maker. Long story short, Mom is kind of a mystery. Both cardiology and neurology were following her case because her heart was so affected by the pain. Typically pain causes a heart rate to increase, not decrease. They had a bit of a run around trying to find the right kind of meds to give her while also trying to figure out a way forward. They ran all sorts of ultrasounds, CT scans, heart scoping, MRI (which was scary because they had to take the pacer out for that two hour procedure and maintained a high heart rate with meds), and her heart is literally the poster child for perfect health. The doctors kept saying that it was a very unique situation. They ended up having out of state consultations and meetings to figure out what to do. There was also a shortage of rooms while we were at the hospital, so that made things interesting too.
We were in the ICU for 5 days and I slept at the hospital room with mom each night. She couldn't talk or eat without pain episodes being triggered, causing communicating with the nursing staff to be a little interesting. On Sunday, they finally found a combination of pain medication that helped and she was able to talk/eat! There was still talk about her needing a permanent pacemaker out of caution; however, her heart stabilized as her pain was brought under control. They have pretty much decided that it was a virus that settled into the nerves, somehow affecting her Vagus nerve...but that's still an educated guess. She was actually released on Tuesday afternoon in the middle of the freak snow storm Charlottesville had (2.5 hours for a typical 30 minute drive home). She is not allowed to drive for a while, feeling weak and tired, but so very glad to be home.
Things like this amaze me because I feel like you are able to see people's true character when crisis strikes--and I am so proud of my family. My 8 week-old second cousin was also in the ICU in Richmond (having an extremely close call but now stabilized) during the exact same time, so things were honestly really hard all around.
Long story short, Mom is okay. She wasn't...but God's hand was in this in a lot of ways. Please pray for continued healing, strength and peace. To everyone who sat in the waiting room all day with us, brought food to the waiting room, sat with mom so we could go take showers, sent flowers/cards, texted, and was praying...you have no idea how sweetly held we felt. I am still trying to process everything that I saw, but it was so reassuring to know that we have a true community of people around us. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about some of the things that were done for us.
So from the Dumaresq family, thank you. <3
[So glad to be home]
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