The 4th Level Of Love

The pain was so severe that she passed out. That’s when the physician called the ambulance and she was transported to the hospital. Mom said that the pain was just below her ribs and radiated around her back, she started sweating, felt nauseated and all that added up to a possible heart attack.

Long story short the pain abated, all the symptoms subsided, and all the tests came back negative. They even did C scans of her abdomen, head, ultrasounds of her heart and neck. Nada, zip, zulch, nothing there. So theories about what happened range from a bad case of gas to God knows what.

I stayed with her all day from 9am until I dropped her off at home at 8pm.

Here is an interesting fact; all this happened on the 10th anniversary of my dad’s death. So we had a lot of time to talk about dad. She said she had been thinking about the date all week… and so have I. I told her that her pain in the side was dad trying to get her attention. There were more than a few times when he was a pain to her.

I don’t know what to make of all of it. I’m calling the whole event a God thing.

We had a little run in with the health system while we were at it. We couldn’t get her released from the hospital without leaving against medical advice. Mom did not want to stay another night! The lady in the next bed is having a colonoscopy Friday morning so they are making her drink this concoction to clean her out. And since she couldn’t walk to the bath room they set up a little port-o-potty next to her bed. With nothing between her and my mom except a thin curtain we could her EVERY LITTLE HUMAN FUNCTION sound she made. Mom looked at me with wide eyes as if to say “I can’t listen to that all night… GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

The problem was the MD was missing in action, AWAL, no where to be found and not answering phone calls or pages. No MD, no release. We where trapped, prisoners in a HOTEL CALIFORNIA kind of situation… but with a lady using the port-o-potty every fifteen minutes two feet away. We started to pray!

Within a few minutes God found our recalcitrant MD and we were on the road home.

What an experience! I’ll say one thing. Praise the Lord for competent well trained RNs who know how to work systems and MDs. Ours was the greatest.

Thus ends my exciting day, 12 hours of caring for my mom, in the middle of a very busy work week. May it never happen to you!

Thanks for your love and prayers. You are the greatest!

I love you- Bryan Martin.