Posted 5/5/2015 5:09 AM (GMT 0)
Hello everyone! I'm really hoping for some kind of help or guidance as to what my mom is going thru right now; Let me start off by saying my mom is 79, 100lbs and about 5'2" and is more active than my 2 year old son. She has a history of high blood pressure, high cholesteral and a history of blood clots (hasn't had one in over 40 years) so she takes an aspirin everyday. My family and I took her to Disney the first week of February and we had a blast. She was running, yes running, with my son and loved every minute of it and so did we. We were there for 6 days. The day we left she woke up with a terrible sore throat, cough and nausea but said she would be fine. Talk to her later and she had lost her voice but just insisted she was ok. She said she still felt nauseous so she was just going to go to bed. She didn't go to church Sunday morning (that has never happened b4) and stayed in bed all day. Long story short she ended up passing out in the bathroom and was taken to the ER and hospitalized for about 4 days. Bloodwork, Stress Test, Cat Scan, Ekg and all were normal. During her Echocardiogram, The discovered an aneurysm in her aortic valve that measured 5.5 cm. They referred her to a specialist at the University of Penn. Before our appointment, she was still feeling light headed, dizzy and just had severe shortness of breath so I took her to the University of Penn's ER. While they were very nice, we were told that she had 2 aneurysms and one was measuring 5.2 cm and the other was 2.9 cm. They couldn't stress enough how this had nothing to do with her passing out, her shortness of breath. We finally met with the specialist and he spent about 10 mins with us saying that the aneurysm measured 4.9 cm and that no surgery was necessary at this time, Once again, this is not causing her symptoms. So we found a cardiologist, ran a bunch of tests and everything has come back normal. My mom still isn't any better. Going from a women who trucked it around Disney with no problems and building a deck on the back of her house late last fall, to now a woman who can barely walk 5 ft without feeling short of breath and feeling as though she is going to pass out everyday. Her family physician is a joke, the whole practice is, but my mom is now refusing any further medical attention because she feels as though they are "writing her off because she is old" and feels as though she shouldn't be begging doctors to see her, which I kind of feel her on. My mom does not do doctors. The fact that she is asking for help is a real concern. She stitched her head back together when she fell one year because she didn't want to go to the ER. She has no history of anxiety and while I feel as though she's frustrated and me being the one who suffers from anxiety attacks, I don't think this is the case. I just talked to her a little while ago and even when she is just sitting on the couch watching TV or talking to me it takes forever for her to talk because of her shortness of breath. Her lungs are clear, negative for pneumonia in all 4 of the chest X-rays. She has never smoked and has half a glass of port wine on New Years Eve. I'm at a complete loss of where to go from here. Getting a second opinion is going to be really hard, as I said she is now refusing to seek any other medical care as this is something she will once again "fix herself." Can any give me an opinion on what might be going on? I'm desperate. I will travel wherever I need to to get her back to being my mummy.