Saturday, May 23, 2009

Please pray for my mom

About a year ago, my mom was diagnosed with sjogrens syndrome, which is a chronic autoimmune disease in which people’s white blood cells attack their moisture-producing glands. Today, as many as four million Americans are living with this disease.

Until recently, the only "complication" my mom had from the sjogrens was constant (and annoying and uncomfortable) dry mouth. And she dealt with it well, as uncomfortable as I imagine one would be with a constantaly dry mouth, she never once complained about it and just walked on.

She went into the doctor about 2 months ago complaining of shortness of breath, and when they took her oxygen levels they were only at 80% (96% or higher is normal) and they immediately put her on oxygen. She was also given a cpap machine at night to help with her breating while sleeping.

Needless to say, her oxygen saturations alarmed the doctors and they started running a lot of test on her, EKG, CT, blood draws and a number of other tests I can't recall right now. She was put on some new medications, on of them being the steroid prednisone. Prednisone use can cause a reduction in immunity, which is what happened with my mom this week.

She was taken by ambulance on Friday morning to the hospital and admitted. She woke up feeling horrible and having a harder than normal time breating and was in so much pain that she was yelling for my dad to call 911. She was diagnosed with pneumonia, quite a bad case of it, and they admitted her for IV antibiotics.

I don't know what's next, I don't really understand what all of this means, but I do know that there is likely a LOT more of this sort of thing to come.

So I would ask for those of you who pray, to please add my mom to your prayer list. Please pray for her comfort, as this disease is attacking many aspects of her body; and continued strength to fight all of this. And also for my dad as he watches my mom suffer through all of this and feels hopeless to help her. Please pray for his strength.

thank you...

2 comments:

Hannah said...

We've been praying and will continue to pray. You and the kids are always in our prayers too. We love you so much!

Krista said...

i love your mom dearly! she is amazingly strong woman! tell her i said hello! and i'll be praying!