She Sprung A Leak

My mom keeps having all these things go wrong with her.

Back in the early 90's she had a parathyroid removed because her
calcium levels were too high. Her body was pulling it out of her
bones and teeth and dumping it into her bloodstream. The surgery
ended up being a REALLY good thing; they discovered she had thyroid
cancer.

So they took that out too while they were in there.

In the early 2000's they discovered she has this "thing" on the back
of her heart. It is almost like an extra chamber. They suspect this
is a congenital birth defect. And possibly hereditary, like the
parathyroid thing.

Gee thanks Mom.

Her remaining parathyroids started misbehaving last year. This time
she started getting kidney stones. Lots and lots of kidney stones.

So they took out the rest of her parathyroid.

Subsequently, she had to start taking large amounts of calcium
supplements, until her body "woke up" and started making enough on its
own to compensate. Within a few weeks of the procedure, she was back
in the hospital because her calcium levels had dropped so low she was
having trouble breathing and could hardly walk. It took about a week
of iv calcium and other stuffs before she was considered "regulated".

Oh, I almost forgot, at some point in there they discovered that she
has a cyst on her adrenal gland (that's above the kidney) on her left
side. They are pretty certain it is benign and it is not producing
any hormones or doing anything bad other than sitting there and
occassionally getting a little bigger.

So they are watching it for now.

A few months ago they decided she has lymph edema in her left leg.
They wanted her to go to the lymph edema clinic for treatments. Turns
out she can't do that because she is getting Home Health Care for
physical therapy and for her chronic cellulitis, (did I mention she
has chronic cellulitis too?) and medicare takes issue with having both
treatments at once. So to try and keep the Home Health, but still
treat the lymph edema, the tried compression socks, and compression
wraps.

Her leg didn't tolerate this very well and she had to stop.

Last week on a trip to her lung doctor (oh did I mention she is
permently on oxygen? Picwician's Syndrome. I probably spelled that
wrong.) she had trouble getting her lymph edema leg into the car and
she pulled a muscle. It has been bothering her since then.

So last night I get a call from her that she is just in so much pain
she can't stand it, and she doesn't think she can get up and walk. So
I go over and make her call 911 so they can transport her to the
hospital.

They did a CAT scan at the hospital. Turns out she is bleeding into
her abdominal cavity. The doctor wasn't sure from where or why and
questioned us about if my mom had fallen or run into something. We
couldn't come up with anything. After the doctor left the room, we
realized that we had forgotten to tell them about the adrenal cyst
while giving them her medical history. The nurse thought must be the
source. That the cyst had ruptured.

She came back a little bit later and said nope. The cyst was still
visible on the CAT scan. The doctor came back in a few minutes after
that and said that one of the other doctors has seen this happen
before. It is not that uncommon for people on blood thinners.

Oh yeah, she is on blood thinners because she had a pulmonary embolism
once. And a TIA. You'll have to Google that one, I'm not even going
to try and spell it out, but it is basically a little stroke in the
brain.

So anyway, the bleeding isn't from any one source.

Basically, she just sprung a leak.