The Aneurism

“You've got to go to sleep, Kami?” I whispered softly. “It's after 11:00 honey.”

My fourteen-year-old daughter turned over slightly and hunched her shoulders more fully under her blankets.

“I can't sleep,” she mumbled.

“What's the matter?” I asked, sitting down on the bed next to her.

She didn't answer, so I rubbed my hand up and down her back for a few seconds, Kami always loved having her back rubbed, and finally asked again, “Honey, what's wrong? Why can't you sleep?”

Slowly, she turned over and lifted her head out of the folds of her blanket.

“I'm afraid I won't be able to hear grandma if she calls,” she whispered.

Poor Kamala. She was sleeping in the extra bedroom, right across the hall from mom. Moe and I slept in the room behind hers, but our door opened into the living room on the other side of the house. She was right. If mom called out for help in the night, we probably wouldn't be able to hear her. Obviously, since mom's attack two days earlier, my sweet daughter had taken upon herself the responsibility of watching over her grandmother in the night.

“How about if I sleep here with you?” I suggested, snuggling down next to her on the double bed. “You go to sleep, and I'll listen for grandma, OK?”

That was a long night. I always got a back ache from sleeping in strange beds anyway, and sharing a bed with Kami made it worse, but at least she was able to go to sleep.

“I'm going to have to figure something else out, though,” I told Moe the following morning after the girls went to school. “Maybe we should trade bedrooms with Kami for awhile.”

“Let's see how things go,” my husband suggested. “Alan said he would be surprised if mom made it through the month.”

He was right. Alan, my brother-in-law and mom's doctor, was not very optimistic about mom's recovery. She had pulmonary hypertension, which seemed to be getting worse, but he was also the first to admit that mom was a puzzle. She had surprised all of us by outliving dad, and her mother had lived to be one hundred years old, even though she was frail and in and out of the hospital numerous times, defying all of her doctor's wisdom.

My younger sister, Sharon, came over to visit mom later that morning, so I left and ran to the store to buy some valentine cards and candy for mom to send to her out of town children. When I got back my other sister, Linda, was at the house, too.

“Sharon called because mom got sick again,” she told me as I walked into the house.

“I hate this, Linda,” I told her as we walked together back into mom's bedroom to see how she was doing.

Mom was sitting up in bed, talking to Sharon. Linda and I sat down on either side of the bed to visit with her. She looked tired, but seemed to be doing alright.

We were talking quietly, telling stories, when suddenly mom's face turned dark purple again, and she passed out. Linda and I both jumped up and took mom by the shoulders, trying to gently lay her down on her pillows. Then Linda pulled out her cell phone and called Alan.

“What should we do?” she begged, as Sharon and I stood by, looking on helplessly.

Almost immediately, mom's eyes twitched, and she began coming out of her faint. As she focused on us she moved her head from side to side, and I leaned over her.

“Mother, are you alright?” I asked.

She kind of moaned, still moving her head back and forth.

“Does it hurt, mom?” I asked again.

“Yes,” she mumbled.

“Where?

“My neck,” she gasped, reaching up and touching the left side of her neck with her hand. “And my back.”

“Does this help?” Linda asked, sitting next to her on the bed, rubbing the side of her neck.

“Can you rub the top of my back too,” mom panted. “It hurts terribly.”

Linda kept putting pressure on mom's neck while I rubbed the top of her back. Sharon ran outside to find Moe, who was working in the shop. He hurried in and gave mom a Priesthood blessing.

“I bless you that the pain will subside, and that you will be able to last a little longer,” Moe said as he rested his hands upon mom's head. “Ralph is here with you,” he added, tears in his eyes, “to help you get through this.” He was right, I could feel dad in the room.

Pretty soon Alan came, and he gave mom a cursory examination.

“I'm going to give you some pain medicine,” he told her comfortingly, “and some nitroglycerine. Hopefully that will take away the pain.”

To us he said, “It looks like mom has an aneurism in the artery on the left side of her neck. It is ballooning out, and tearing apart. I'll be surprised if she makes it through the next couple of hours, but if she does the aneurism may calm down and she may be OK for a while. We'll just have to wait and see.”

It seemed to take forever, but the pain finally went away and mom was able to calm down. We called my brothers and other sister, and the word was soon passed on to the rest of the family.

I was pretty busy taking care of mom and everyone else. Linda and Sharon stayed, and Sharon's children came over to be with us. I was just wondering what we should do about dinner when the doorbell rang and I discovered one of the sweet sisters in our ward standing on my front step, holding a crock pot full of soup in her hands.

“I was at Alan's office when he got your call,” she told me, “so I thought you might need help with dinner.”

What a life saver she was!

Keith drove up from the valley, and so did my two sons. After eating, Sharon and Linda took their families home. Mom seemed to be resting alright, and Keith wanted to stay with her, so he slept in the chair in mom's room. I got up every four hours to give her pain medicine and see if she was still breathing, and thus we made it through the night.