So this might be the wrong place for this thread, but it also has a few different subjects so I'm not really sure about it going anywhere else, either.

Right now I can't stop blaming myself. This evening my mum collapsed on the floor. I was taking a break, listening to a podcast and playing a video game in the living room. I had those in-ear gel(?) earbuds that cancel out sound (which I actually hate because they never stay in my ears) so I couldn't really hear anything, not to mention I was more focused on what I was listening to. I heard my mum sort of sob so I took out my earbuds, stood up, and took a few steps to find that my mum was on the floor in the hallway. She was breathing heaving and sobbing, laying on her side. I went to her and said a few comforting words and asked if I should call 911 (of course I should! What a stupid question!). So I called, tried to explain the situation, and was left with the request to call again if she got worse. Things didn't change all that much while I was waiting. She started coughing so I asked her if she felt she had to vomit, and when she nodded (she couldn't talk) I made sure she was propped properly. I tried to ask her a few things and got her to squeeze my hand a little as a response. Then her breathing became slower. I tried to "wake" her but she wasn't responding at all, and by then she had stopped breathing hard/sobbing. So I called 911 again. Her breathing was slow but not too shallow, and sometimes it stopped for a few seconds. I was told to do chest compressions which I had mixed feelings about because she was still sort of awake and breathing. I also had a really hard time turning her onto her back as she's overweight and we were in the middle of a tiny hallway. But I did some anyway. Not long after the paramedics arrived. (Side note: I hate living in an apartment. I couldn't switch calls on the phone and there was a small kerfuffle as the guy on the phone had to hang up for me to buzz the paramedics in.) They came up and cleared a space, moved her a little and started to do their work. After questions I had to answer and everything, I called my dad. They took her to the hospital (I don't know how they got the stretcher in the elevator), my dad came home, and then after he got ready we went to see my mum in the hospital. I got asked more questions which I couldn't answer properly because I can never explain anything and it was just hard to explain. So after doing a brain scan they concluded it was not a stroke.

They asked if something was different today and my dad said that she was very worried. I felt some of that this morning, but it didn't quite come off as "worried", if that makes any sense. And as far as I knew she wasn't particularly more worried than other days/lately. They asked what she was worried/stressed about and my dad said it was between them. Because the brain scans were clear they said that it was likely something to do with a lot of anxiety and stress. Later, after a lot of waiting, someone came in (I suppose a psychologist of sorts) and started to say that it must be hard for me at the moment since I had to deal with the emergency, then said the same thing about the collapse being stress related. The subject of my parents came up again and my mum indicated that I shouldn't be present and my dad agreed so I went out to sort out more time for our parking ticket.
My mum had previously told me that my dad was thinking about leaving us (I don't know how serious or immediate) because we were "rude" (not a perfect translation but about the same) to him a lot. He's the one that's always yelling and raising his voice so that's how my brother and I had to communicate for him to understand anything. And I have my own problems of anxiety and depression so I can have a shorter fuse sometimes. But his is even shorter. Anyway, I don't know if they talked about anything else today or yesterday about their relationship and all that. So now my mum is doing better and she should be fine, but I'm still hating myself.

The thing is that I'm pretty sure I heard her trying to call out to me (by sobbing) a while before I stood up to do anything. I heard something and thought it was odd but it wasn't very clear because of the noise-cancellation and podcast. Occasionally I hear random things especially when I'm listening to something else, have a lot of other people talking around me like in public, or sometimes when it's mostly silence so that's what I attributed it to. So since I wasn't sure what I had heard I didn't stop or do anything. I'm pretty sure that I heard this for quite a while before I did anything. I could not possibly feel worse than I do now. I know you'll try to tell me that I shouldn't blame myself, because she's fine. But I can only imagine the pain and how much she was suffering while waiting for me to have an "aha" moment and see what the sound was. She wasn't able to speak or anything, and she couldn't move. Just think of how she must have felt, not knowing if I would even get up to see what had happened. And I know I could've done better tending to/caring for her while the paramedics were on her way. I even have emergency first aid certification!

For the beginning of the ordeal I was pretty calm and everything (shock, no doubt), but then I thought about how I hadn't done anything sooner and just started crying while I was still on the phone with 911. Then it was hard to not cry. It came and went. Then when I phoned my dad I cried again. I hate crying, because in the last few years I haven't just been crying when I'm sad or thinking about something painful. I can't remember what else to say so I suppose that's it.

Since I mentioned my brother let me just say that he's already left for his second year of university so he wasn't home.

This is all a jumbled mess and I giant wall of text so I'm sorry. It's a miracle if you read it all. There are lots more details but I don't know how I could make sense of everything. I don't know what kind of help I'm looking for really... But it's now almost two in the morning so I'm going to try and sleep.

[Michelea]

She is very lucky that you were there to help her, remember that.

20/20 hindsight can be a very dangerous thing. Looking at something AFTER it happened gives you knowledge that you did not have during the time it happened...and that often leads to seeing fault, even though there is nothing to find fault with.

You did a great job handling very scary situation.