Whoo-hoo #3 (big one)

This is the best news I've heard all week.

Remember a couple weeks ago, my mom had an incident where she had some memory blackouts for a short period of time? They ruled out all the really scary neurological stuff at the ER, but they wanted to still do some heart-function tests and an MRI.

(One of her friends told her that if she had had a TIA, it would show up on the MRI.)

One thing they did was a carotid artery ultrasound to check for blockage. My mom had been a bit concerned over the results of this test because for years her cholesterol's bounced around - gone borderline high (never high enough for the doctors to push statins on her though), gone down, gone back up, etc. So she was concerned about there being blockage. (Also - a friend of our family had carotid artery surgery and nearly died of complications afterward. So she was apprehensive about the potential of surgery).

Well - the carotids are perfectly clear. No problems there.
The MRI showed no tumors or plaques or anything much.

Except - apparently she has mastoditis (sp?). I guess this is inflammation around one of the bones near the jaw. The doctor thought it was probably a lowgrade infection (My mom had been complaining of a "blocked" ear but she thought it was allergies). My mom asked her if that could have caused the memory episode and the doctor said she couldn't say 100% for sure, but it was likely.

So now my mom's got horse-pill antibiotics (she's allergic to a lot of them, so she usually winds up with sulfa drugs) and a decongestant.

So, to Kate and anyone else who was praying - thank you. It's a weight off my heart to know that she's basically okay and that probably the thing that caused the memory issue was an infection that can be cleared up.