My Brother-In-Law is in the hospital...

Yesterday was not a fun day. It started out with Vic at home sick. While he was highly irritated by having to be home, that turned out to be good. Around lunch time, we got a call from one of Vic's other brothers saying their brother Jose had been taken to the hospital. Since Vic was sick and didn't want to expose his brother to it, I left Gabe with him and spent the rest of the day at the hospital with Jose and my MIL. Jose had been having a lot of trouble breathing yesterday morning and he felt weak. Luckily, my MIL pushed him to get checked. Jose was being the typical difficult male and was refusing to admit there was a real problem. So MIL called his regular doc who told him to get checked. Jose has muscular dystrophy and in the past few years the disease has caused him to lose a lot of his mobility. It has gotten noticeably worse in the past few months. Jose's doc was concerned he might have a pulmonary embolism (possibly caused by the increased inactivity the disease has caused).

His ekg strip looked good with the exception of him having a rapid heart rate. His blood O2 level sucked with any exertion or without oxygen on. However, his bloodwork showed borderline elevated levels of cardiac enzymes. The cardiac enzymes were not high enough to indicate an ongoing MI (or heart attack) but they were high enough to indicate the heart wasn't pumping the way it should which was causing the blood to not get oxygenated the way it should. If MIL hadn't pushed him to go in, it could have been bad.

The normal next step would be a cardiac stress test but his muscular dystrophy prevents that. They are going to progress directly to a catheterization in order to check for any blockages or abnormalities that could be causing this problem.

Can y'all offer a quick prayer for his health and for my MIL's emotional well being? In less than 2 months, my MIL has lost her husband and one of her brothers. Another one of her brothers had a serious health scare. She is justifiably worried and stressed about this.