Long morning - but home now

Well, it's been a LONG morning, but we are home from the day of appointments. The chest xray didn't take too long, so we got mom's blood work done this morning. Then it was on to cat scan. We were able to check in 30 minutes early and it seemed to fly by after that, except for the barium drinking. It was making mom nauseous. She was only able to drink half of what they recommended, but the scan turned out great anyway - or so they said. Then the MRI people were ready for mom just as soon as the cat scan was over. We got all ready for that and then found out the radiologist had cancelled it. We were told it was because she was short of breath and had a pulmonary embolism.

Since this was the first we heard of an embolism, we requested to talk to someone. They originally offered to let us talk to the doctor on the phone, which I politely refused and we were able to meet with her in person. She told us that the test was cancelled due to the cat scan being so good, they had all the information they needed and did not need to put her through the MRI. Then on a separate note, she told us that mom does have a pulmonary embolism. This is a tiny blood clot that is in her lung. The doctor can not tell where it came from, but thoughts are that it may have broke free from the tumor in mom's heart. Since it was very small, it passed through the arteries. When asked what we were to do next, she did not know, but soon found out from a partner of Dr. Ravi - mom's doctor. He prescribed Levanox, a blood thinner than mom has to inject into her stomach twice a day for a month. Since mom has done this before, she's a pro at it and it is MUCH better than having to go back into the hospital, which could have been an option.

So, now it is almost 2:00pm and we are home and mom is very ready to take a nap. Then again, since we had to be at the hospital at 7:00am, I think we are ALL ready for an afternoon nap. Mom's nurse practitioner, Shu called on the way home and gave us all the same information as we had already been given. The one thing we worried about was if mom had to go in for blood work on the weekend, which we found out she does not need to. Hurray for small miracles. Shu also gave us the blood work results from this morning, in which all were good. The only one I can remember off hand is that her platelets are 75, coming up very nicely. I'm sure dad will get the results later this afternoon and update everyone.

As always, we appreciate all the continued thoughts and prayers. Stacey