LogFAQs > #879373453

I decided to write this tonight for a couple of reasons. One being that I think putting my thoughts down in this manner and sharing it with strangers will help me cope with it and get more closure, and the other being that I'd like to hear your thoughts on the situation and how you would handle it yourselves. However, please know going in that this is a long story.

Several years ago, my mom was diagnosed with a heart condition, ventricular tachycardia, commonly called Vtac. Essentially the heart flutters at a very high speed causing blood to not be pumped properly through the body and making her pass out. There were a few times that she fell out of nowhere and would cut up her face pretty badly, and we later realized that it was because of this.

It's treated with a procedure called an ablation. They go into the heart through the arteries and try to burn away the problem tissues causing the irregularity. Now, my mom went through this TWICE some years back with her regular heart doctor, and he was unable to solve the problem. He also found that her arteries were perfect, no cholesterol blockage at all. Other than this condition that they considered an electrical problem, her heart itself was very healthy and fully functioning.

She wasn't satisfied just going on with medicine though, so she decided to do the more dangerous procedure of an external ablation, where the doctor would burn tissues on the outside of the heart. This was done over 2 years ago now, and that event caused me very extreme grief, as I wrestled with my mom not making it through that procedure and trying to convince her to just take the drugs instead.

Well, as it turned out, this was unsuccessful as well, as they could not get the heart to go into Vtac! She was awake with them in her heart, pumping in testosterone and whatever else, but the heart wouldn't cooperate, so he wasn't able to actually do anything. It was all just a waste of time, money, emotions, and the awful pain she went through.

Fast forward to 2017. She makes quarterly visits to the heart doctor (if that) and everything seems good. She takes her drugs and feels healthy. Up until one day she gets her refill and she sees that the pills have completely changed. She asked the pharmacist to make sure it was the right stuff, and was told that it's the same thing, but the manufacturer was changed so it looks different.

Well, right as she got onto this new regimen, she started feeling like she was passing out again, heart racing again, losing it again, and every time I saw her she would act like it was happening. We were at a certain event just sitting there and she would go into periods where she was staring off into nothing and then say she didn't know what happened the past couple minutes.

This culminated on a particularly snowy day as she was driving to work. Because people are idiots and weren't used to some snow being on the ground, traffic was completely stopped on the freeway and she ended up being on the road for 2 hours. She never made it to work that day because her heart went into Vtac. She ended up getting my dad to call the hospital and she turned her car around and drove back there. Then he calls me and lets me know, so I left work at lunch time.

This is where things get ugly and I'm going to get very emotional as I relive it.
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Watch out for snakes!