saturday nightmare

Saturday morning, I went home from Friday shift at 5:30 in the morning. Mama was already awake and so while I was playing Mafia Wars, we were chatting and when I told her I am going to bed, she told me she will go out for the day and visit friends in Marikina. Nothing unusual in that so I said "okay."

An hour later, Mama was standing at the foot of my bed, shaking me to wake up. I did and I saw her sat down with fists clutched to her chest. At first I just went to her and was rubbing her arms. I wasn't still completely awake from my slumber so it hasn't sank in how seriously she was having difficulty in breathing. After about five minutes, I think, it finally dawned on me that she was in excruciating pain.

My adrenalin shoot up and I rushed to the other room to wake up my brother so we can bring mama to the hospital. In ten minutes we were out of the house, thanks to the help of my neighbors in bringing mama down from our second floor flat and driving us to Makati Med, ER.

That's how our current predicament started.

Later on in the ER, I would have the hardest conversation in my entire life. As if reliving a scene from "House," the surgeon who is checking on Mama, ushered me and my brother to one of the deserted offices there. I could already feel my blood draining from my face and my own chest feels like it is tightening and I myself am having difficulty breathing. With labored breath, I followed the doc and Kuya to the room and sat on one of the chairs.

In a daze and tear-streaked face, I listened as the doctor painted the bleakest picture of my mom... He said Mama had a "dissecting aorta aneurysm." In my brain, aneurysm is equal to life-threatening condition and true enough, doc said my mom is currently on what we wish we'll only hear in the movies, "50-50 condition." Options such as surgery that guarantees only 10% of survival rate were discussed, along with the hefty amount of how much such a surgery will cost. Words such as "critical," "mortality rate," "comatose," "DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)" were being used casually.

Prior to the doctor talking to me and Kuya, I was already praying hard to God that whatever ails mama will just be temporary, like what happened in January. And being a believer of how prayer works wonders, I started texting almost everyone in my phonebook. I think I started texting at around 12 and those who got my messages will see the progressiveness of Mama's condition as I report everything the docs told me. At first they wanted to open up Mama, that's why I started begging everyone to please donate blood... and later on my text message would say she was already in a coma and might not even make it...

All those happened on Saturday. It's now Thursday and I am just awed and humbled to report that my Lord and Savior has been working miraculously in Mama's life. Even her cardiologist was amazed on her turnaround after just 24 hours of medication on Sunday. As of today, day 6 of her confinement in MICU15 at Makati Med, she is looking and feeling way, way better. She is fully aware and 100% conscious. She feels every bit of the pain the tubes do to her now. It's not a lovely sight but just knowing she is still alive and is fighting for her life is something that I'll forever be grateful to my God for.

However, this does not discount the fact that the torn aorta is still torn, and unless a surgery is done, it will remain open. But I am putting my trust to the Greatest Healer, Jehovah Rapah, my Lord and Savior that He will patch it up miraculously so mama will be 100% fully recovered in no time.

The doctors hasn't discussed any other options about that. They are currently preoccupied stabilizing Mama's heart rate, oxygen intake and BP(blood pressure). Where BP remains to be erratic where she gets sudden attacks showing a BP reading as high as 228/155 (the highest I've seen) and as low as 46/22. Aside from the BP, she is constantly nursing a fever averaging at 38 degrees celsius and is constantly complaining of the heat, where in fact, the room temperature in her ICU room is already really cold, as it forces me to wear two jackets. Her room is the only room in the ICU ward that has an electric fan. Yesterday, she was suddenly in chills. As the coldness of the ice packs given to her to bring down her temperature crept into her body so we had to warm her up by covering her with two blankets, my jackets and a spotlight. Aside from this, she is also coughing up phlegm and so they had to suction those fluids out of her lungs every now and then. She is now being fed through the tube attached through her nose so that is a great relief to her since the first three days she had nothing to eat and thus constantly complain of being hungry.

Regardless of all that, I am still positive that she will make it and we'll just have to continue praying for her fast recovery. God has already blessed us with Mama waking up from a coma on the first day so I don't doubt He can do so much more.

Please join me in praying for a miracle!

"For He wounds, but He also binds up;
He injures, but His hands also heal."
- Job 5:18