Heart stopped

Over the last 24 hours, the hearts of two people I know stopped.

One of them, my mother-in-law’s, started again. She lived to fight another day.

Whilst I was in the hospital with my father-in-law and sister-in-law, and T was making his way home, unbeknownst to me, my relative’s heart stopped.

The contrast was stark. One – my relative – had been dying for a while. In hospital for months, with advanced cancer. Treatment was withdrawn a couple of days ago. We knew the time was near.

This person had been a pretty nasty person for their whole life. And when it came down to it, it came to one person, my mother, to be there for the final moments. My mother is not even related to this person, other than through marriage, long since separated. She thinks nobody deserves to die alone. Perhaps not, but this person almost did. There’s something really sad about nobody being there for your final days because you drove them all away.

My mother-in-law, T’s mum, had an immediate influx of caring. From her husband of over 50 years, who drove frantically to come and see her. From her daughter, T’s sister, who had to witness the awful moment she almost died (it’s thought she technically did) and was brought back with CPR from my amazing midwife L, on the floor of the pub where I was holding my baby shower. (Dramatic much?!) And from me, her daughter-in-law (well, technically we’re living in sin) who’s only known her for a few years but cares about her muchly. Especially as the mother of the best guy I’ve ever met.

My mum woke me up with a phone call this morning to tell me that our relative had died, which meant I was more tired than usual – I would have turned off my phone but wanted to be sure if there was any problems with T’s mum, they could get through.

So whilst we were by T’s mum’s bedside, my relative died, almost alone. 

And thankfully, T’s mum didn’t die. Or if she did, it was temporary. L brought her back. (L, who now is not only known as T and N’s amazing midwife but also as T’s sister’s best friend in the whole world, and T’s dad’s forever-in-debt hero.)

She was kept in last night in our local hospital, and we booked T’s sis and dad into our local hotel, and then we’ve spent most of today at the hospital. She actually seems in good spirits, although weak. We took some shopping in for her and stuck around chatting. She’s on the cardiac ward and has had CT scans and chest x rays and so on. They think maybe she has a pulmonary embolism so she’s been on warfarin (blood thinners) and is still hooked up to the ECG machine. They think her heart actually stopped. It is scary. They are observing her more, and maybe more scans. We don’t know if she might be discharged tomorrow.

So… We came back this evening and had a mini baby shower. My BFF had included everything in our bags which we had been planning to do but didn’t. So T had a fun time trying to do the quiz (was it my bump or Kim Kardashian’s?! And tasting baby food – which he seemed to enjoy) and we had a nice time opening all the gifts. People were so nice. Really we both felt exhausted – after getting up quite early but probably more from the emotional fallout of the past couple of days.

We’re going to have an early night tonight and hopefully we’ll have good news tomorrow.