MOM

Ok, here is the skinny on mom. Mind you, dad said the family needs to know but we do not need to broadcast it, so having said that...

The doc. did an ultra sound on her heart today and found that she has mitral stenosis, and mitral regurgitation. Basically she has hardening of the arteries, calcification throughout her heart. Like Marilyn said her heart is to fragile to do surgery. The doc called it a porciline aorta, the aorta is lined with calcium. The heart is suppose to be soft, plyable, mom's does not have any soft spots. Therefore she is not a canadate for surgury becouse they would have to clamp off her aorta to fix or replace the valve and there is no place to clamp it.

She is as healthy today as she was a couple days ago, we just know more about her heart. The doc says people who had rheumatic fever gets this a lot. She had rheumatic fever twice. Colestoral and diabeties could also play a part in it. People do not die from this, however they do from complications such as heart attack, stroke, pnuemonia etc. She has a lot of pressure in her chest cavity that is causing her to have shortness of breath. They are going to try to releave that with a water pill. The doc will keep an eye on her and see if that will help. Hopefully it will.

As Marilyn said, mom does have a history of defying the odds so...

And like I said, she is not worse off today than she was two days ago, we just know more about her heart.