Joy's Scare -- Background

In an effort to reduce phone calls and keep everyone informed, I decided to create this blog to keep everybody updated.

For those of you who don't have much background here's the gist:

On Valentines' Day evening, Todd and Joy had their friends Mark and Sharon over for dinner and a few drinks (at their condo in Florida). After dinner, my mom was talking to Sharon and in mid-conversation -- Joy stopped breathing -- she was having a massive heart attack. Promptly, Sharon began screaming and they called 911 immediately. The 911 operator gave them instructions on how to give her CPR, my dad began the procedure and Mark later assisted giving her compressions until the paramedics arrived (within 5 minutes of the call). When she was loaded into the ambulance the outlook was grim, as she hadn't fully regained a pulse. In the short time it took to get to the hospital (about 5 minutes) they were able to get a pulse back briefly.

At the hospital, my dad waited in the waiting room with Mark and Sharon to hear the status. After what seemed like an eternity, one of the paramedics came out and told my dad that they had gotten her back and they were working to stabilize her.

Once they were able to get her heart rate regulated, they put her on a ventilator to take as much stress off her body as possible. They then introduced a cooling solution throughout her body in addition to a sedative which put her in a medically induced coma. The cooling solution is same thing that the Buffalo Bills tight end had(http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/bills/2007-09-10-everett-injury_N.htm) in order to prevent potential brain/ organ damage. As some of you are aware, my mom has a pace-maker -- the doctors 'interrogated' the pace-maker and found that we heart was down for 10 minutes, which by the doctors account is very fortunately as anything longer greatly increases the risk for brain damage.

She remained in the 'frozen' state until 10:30pm on the 15th (24 hours after the inital event). At 10:30pm, they began the very gradual process of weening her off of the cooling solution to warm the body overnight. Doctors warned us that this process could 'open a can of worms' and she wasn't out of the woods yet.