Mom's Ticker Fix - Thanks Science.

My mom was pretty young when she had me, and I was especially young at that time too.  Thus, at 44 years old she's still just 20 years older than me, the same as when I was born.  Yet in the same time I have gone from 0% of her age at birth to a little less than 5% at my first birthday to 68.7% of her age now.  As we approach infinity our ages will essentially converge.

I point this out because it is fun to be in a similar age bracket as your parents, or at least close to it.  It is a reminder that I will soon get the senior discount at Denny's (free coffee starts at 50).

Having young parents is great.  They still can do stuff.  Unfortunately my mom has wrestled with diabetes and a multitude of heath issues.  One of these is a bad heart valve. Apparently her aortic valve never was quite right, so it is causing her life-threatening problems.

Science to the rescue.

Today she was fitted with a new valve and some coronary bypass plumbing to compensate for narrowing passages.  When she was born in 1946, someone with the same problems would have died, no questions asked.

Her problem was so extreme that as she was getting checked by angiography today her doctors elected to not wait to the surgery.  They wheeled her into the operating theater today and started re-plumbing.  Tonight she's in the ICU and apparently still out from anesthesia.

While we always have concerns when people go into a medical arena to correct a severe problem, I saw this with great relief.  I've watched her deteriorate for the last decade, at the same time living in a self deception that all was quite rosy.  I think the rest of my family felt that all was well too.  They see it every day so they don't see the radical changes I see every six months.  The progression of the disease crept in slowly and stole her function, yet it was only really clear from a distance.

So now she's officially on the road to recovery.  Thanks science.  That's another reason why I was comfortable.  She was in the hands of experts, people that do this every day with skillful precision.  Valves, arteries, blood- that's child's play for these men and women.

Perhaps the new ticker parts will spur a new outlook on life and a warm sense of improvement.  Science can only do so much, now the human spirit has to take over.

Next my dad's gimpy leg!