A Big Scare

What are your worst fears?

There have been questionnaires that have been sent around friends and family on Facebook, MySpace, and even by email, and one of the questions always seems to be: What is your worst fear?

In almost every questionnaire result, the answer had been the loss of a loved one, or to have a love one hurt. Well, yesterday, May 2nd I woke up to a frightening phone call. My mother was in the hospital.

Why was she there? Good question, I wish there was a better answer. Doctors were baffled by the large and sudden spike in her blood pressure. She woke up that morning and was feeling very dizzy and very ill. A normal reaction, if you know my mom, would have been to go and lie down and rest it off, but she was feeling so terrible and so dizzy that she decided it was necessary to seek medical attention. When her doctor checked her out he declared that she needed to go to the hospital immediately.

I was informed later on, as I had been catching up on some sleep due to studying for midterms. I neglected to answer the phone when it had rung and so when the message finally reached me I felt so guilty and awful for sleeping through them. I was informed that mom wasn’t able to come home from the hospital until the doctors could get her unusually high blood pressure to come down, they said that she was at risk for either a heart attack or a stroke.

Well, forget about being able to focus on homework after being told that your mom is in the hospital and might have a heart attack or stroke. I tried to remain calm, but I couldn’t get the thought of my mom out of my head.

Chris and I decided to join Bryan for a movie, so we headed out got in the car and found one of our tires to be completely flat. Well, that ended my plans for going to mom’s house for the night, I was stuck at home. We tried to go to Less Schwab before it closed, but it was 5:30 PM when we found the flat, and Less Schwab closes at 5PM on Saturdays. We decided to go to the local theatre instead and saw the new X-Men movie “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” During the previews was a big long ad about mother’s day and boy did the tears well up in my eyes. I kept praying “Please let mom be okay” over and over. I had already called twice for updates before we left and no change had occurred.

The first thing I did when we got home from the movie was to call Tiffy. Thank heaven, when I called she said that mom’s blood pressure had finally come out of the danger zone and they were able to send her home. They did caution however that it was still very high and they gave her a monitor and some medication and told her to come back for a checkup in a week. I was so happy that she was doing better, as was everyone else.

I decided that that was to close a call. Mom is way too young. It is time for a lifestyle change. I intend to help mom, dad, myself, Chris, Bryan, Tiffy, and anyone else to start anew and begin a healthier lifestyle that will bring vitality, strength, and longevity to us all. I don’t want to experience another scare like I had yesterday. I want to nip it in the bud before it can happen, I want to prevent it instead of cure it. I want to be proactive with my health. I pray that we can all start and/or continue a healthy lifestyle and live a long, healthy, active life.