My mom had a heart attack today.
As most days that end up changing everything often do, this one started out completely normal. I was up early after not much sleep (stayed up way too late and then shared a hotel room with my snoring mom). Had breakfast with friends who were also in town for the wedding, hung out with some other friends so that I could catch up on some much belated baby cheek chewing on their 15 month old son and spent the afternoon dozing while mom went down to the pool for a swim.
She came back up to the room smelling of chlorine and happy. Drank a beer and watched the US Open with me, then took a shower. By the time she got out of the shower and had come back to the room after going down to get our wedding present out of the car I knew something was wrong. She was pale and sweaty and saying her chest hurt. She sat in front of the A/C for a bit and got dressed for the wedding. All the while just breathing and telling me she was fine.
I didn’t really believe her. Which is why when we arrived downstairs at the wedding, I immediately went to search out her oldest friend to tell her what was going on and ask her to help me keep an eye on mom. When I returned to where I had left her not five minutes ago, mom was gone. After a brief, but frantic, search we found her in the bathroom, throwing up, crying and saying that she was no longer ok.
And I froze. I remember saying over and over, I don’t know what to do. Mostly I was in shock. And had it been one of my children I would have immediately snapped into action, but when it’s a parent who is obviously in need of significant medical action, it takes a minute to change roles. I had someone hunt down a cell phone to call 911 and kept talking to her until they arrived.
They took her immediately to the ER and I waited to hear what was next.
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