Hi y'all, looking for advice: Mom was recently discovered to have had a silent heart attack at some point in the last 3-4 years, so she had a diagnostic angiogram and found that 3 out of 4 major arteries usually coming from the heart are COMPLETELY blocked (they would have done angioplasty but it wasn't possible, TOO blocked), and her aorta is twisted into a pretzel from her scoliosis, she is growing strange new arteries that don't go anywhere to try to take the blood somewhere, the mitral (main) valve that keeps the oxygenated blood from recirculating into the heart instead of flowing out to the body has failed, and (yes, there's more) clearing out the arteries won't be enough so she'll have to have the valve replaced too, AND because she's a heavy (their term: she's actually down to less than a pack a day from over 4) smoker her lungs may not tolerate the anesthesia for a triple bypass plus valve replacement. So I gather (she won't ask the cardiologist for the details) that there are 4 possibilites: 1) she doesn't have surgery and is dead in a year; 2) she doesn't have surgery and lives for a few more years, deteriorating from where she is which is she can walk with her walker, she just has to stop for breath all the time); 3 she has the surgery and dies within the year anyway, and 4) she has the surgery and lives for years, newly deteriorating but from a point better off than she is now.

Does anybody know how to try to find out the various probabilities of these 4 possibilities? My take is that she shoudl weigh the possibility of no-surgery-dead-soon to surgery-might-live-a-while, so that she has the chance to be remembered by all her grandkids (in 6 years, say, she'd see my sister's twins out of high school, my other sister's daughters out of college, and my twins and the other twins' younger brother out of middle school, leaving only the very youngest (whose mother, my other sister, has divorced us all anyway) to remember her only as a vague impression and some stories. BUT she (Mom) isn't at all sure if she even wants to consider the surgery. Now, note that I would actually respect her wishes should she decide against it, but I want to have DATA to use in the decision. Any ideas? THANKS all. I know you will think good thoughts about this, too.