Umi

However, for those who follow me on Twitter and those who are close to me in real life, you know what I have been going through this last week.

Last week, my mother wasn’t feeling very well. Her legs hurt and her right arm was going numb. I asked her if she wanted me to take her to the hospital on Friday night. She, being the stubborn woman she is (I come by it honestly), declined. My four writing partners demanded I take her, and I told her that. She still declined. Again, stubborn… until Sunday morning, 6AM, after I had a whopping three hours of sleep. I’m not complaining about the lack of sleep. It just sets it up for the rest of my day.

I took her to the ER, a place I hate to visit because I have a compromised immune system. The hospital is the worst place for me to spend any amount of time. Luckily, it wasn’t busy at all. They took blood while she flirted with the paramedic in training, which was rather entertaining. Asked the poor guy straight out why all paramedics and firefighters were cute. She’s always like this when she goes to the hospital, and thankfully, he had a good sense of humor. At least she didn’t try to set me up on a date with the guy. He was too short anyway. Then they ran tests on her and discovered that her potassium levels were really low. I mean, it was at 1.9 and it’s supposed to be at 5-something. This was causing the numbness in her arm. They put her in a room and we waited. While we were waiting, I watched her heartbeat fluctuate from 74 beats up to 102. All over the place and she’s just lying there. Great. Wonderful. This has me a bit concerned. They stuck a potassium IV in her and after three hours, I’m falling asleep. She tells me to go home and sleep for a bit, so I do. Again, Jinxie likes to spend as little time in a hospital as she can.

Five hours later, I call her cell phone to see where they’d moved her upstairs, which was what they were planning to do when I left. I’m informed that she’s still in the ER. Seriously? Ok, fine. I went back down to see her and discover that while I slept, her potassium level dropped another full point. Here’s the thing with that: if I hadn’t taken her to the hospital, she’d have gone into cardiac arrest at home. I’m very thankful she woke me up at 6AM because that would have happened while I slept. I’m really not ready to bury my mother just yet. I did, however, have a nice little revelation/realization when I got home that morning, and that was that I need to make sure she’s eating properly and taking her medications and supplements. She has potassium pills here at home. Yes, this could have been prevented. Crazy stubborn woman. Jinxie will now become a nurse. Yay! This is much sooner than I ever expected.

I sat with her a while longer, right up until they were about to finally move her upstairs to ICU, and then I left to have dinner with the Wookies, which is something I do just about every Sunday. Around 11PM, she sends me a text stating that it looked like she was staying the night. Well, duh!

By Wednesday, she’s out of ICU and I find out that her heart is doing all sorts of weird things. She a-fibbed for a full minute in the morning, and then apparently tried to again before I got to the hospital. Yeah, that’s not good. Her potassium level is much better now, though, so that’s good. Last I knew, they were doing another EKG on her yesterday morning.

I didn’t visit her last night because I wasn’t feeling well. I’m not going to be happy if I caught something while sitting in that damn hospital. But I talked to her on the phone for a while and she sounded great.

And now I’m exhausted after creating a whole crazy scene with H.C. Zuerner tonight on Twitter with our characters (that was really cool and fun, btw).

I’ll update y’all on Umi when I find out more. I don’t even know when she’s coming home at this point.

I have good news too, but I don’t want to say what it is just yet. I might Jinx myself. LOL!

Sleep now.

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