Emergency Relief for Kays surgery

Thank you for all the love and support from all over for our Mom Kay Smith. As most people know, she had to have emergency open heart surgery the week before Thanksgiving. She’s been very healthy, had no signs of illness, and has always monitored her health very closely. On Wednesday night she had a funny feeling in her throat and chest and luckily was with a friend who took her to the ER for a check up. After a CAT scan they found a dissected aorta, which meant emergency surgery. She was immediately helivacted to INOVA. We are so blessed she was sent to Fairfax for one of the best cardio vascular departments around. Knowing this was a very serious surgery, we were all on pins and needles and had no idea what the next few hours would look like. In the morning we finally got to talk to her surgeon and were informed about what might have caused it and told the procedure went well but we had to take this hour by hour and wouldn’t know how she did until after she woke up. She was moved to ICU after surgery and they got her settled and woke her up. We finally got to see her in the afternoon and were in tears finally being able to see and touch her. Her nurses, doctors, surgeon, and all support were amazing and kept us well informed and educated as we got through the night. As of today she has been moved out of ICU and into the general patient care unit. Her doctor says she is an anomaly and he has seen people go through the same surgery and take 3-4 weeks before being moved. He was thrilled at how well she was doing and all of the nurses are so impressed at her progress. You can’t keep our feisty Italian mother down. We are so thankful for all of the love, support, prayers, help, and kindness from everyone and we can’t thank you enough! This GoFundMe is being set up to help out with some pretty unexpected medical bills that quite frankly, being a teacher in WV won’t completely cover. She’s insured through the school and partially covered, but as we all know, medical bills are outrageous and a helicopter ride isn’t cheap. Any financial help we can pull together for her would alleviate a lot of stress on her and would be a complete blessing. If you can’t afford to donate all we ask is to keep her in your thoughts, send tons of love, and maybe buy her a glass of wine once she’s all better.