MOTHER TERESA'S CONDITION DETERIORATES.Byline: Associated Press Mother Teresa, beloved for spending most of her 85 years ministering to the poorest of the poor, was struggling for life Friday after suffering heart failure earlier in the day. ``Her condition has deteriorated since Friday morning,'' said Dr. S Dr. Doctor. dr. dram. .K. Sen, director of Woodlands Nursing Home. Doctors had hoped to remove her respirator respirator /res·pi·ra·tor/ (res´pi-ra?ter) ventilator (2). cuirass respirator see under ventilator. Friday, one day after she suffered cardiac arrest cardiac arrest n. Abbr. CA A sudden cessation of cardiac function, resulting in loss of effective circulation. Cardiac arrest A condition in which the heart stops functioning. , but decided against it. Doctors were giving Mother Teresa an anti-coagulant to ease the flow of blood through her left ventricle left ventricle n. The chamber on the left side of the heart that receives the arterial blood from the left atrium and contracts to force it into the aorta. , one of the four chambers of the heart, which failed Friday. Her temperature was still 100 degrees, and she was receiving anti-malaria drugs. The tiny, frail Catholic nun was admitted to the hospital Tuesday with a malarial fever. Doctors put her on the respirator Thursday when her heart stopped beating for nearly a minute. She was revived with electric shocks. Doctors said complications from her malaria brought on the cardiac arrest. The Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish and Norwegian: Nobels fredspris) is the name of one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. winner, who will turn 86 Tuesday, has maintained a grueling pace at her missions and orphanages in India and abroad despite her failing health. She suffered a heart attack in 1983 during a meeting with Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II) born Karol Józef Wojtyła in Rome. In 1989, she suffered a second, stronger, heart attack and received a pacemaker. Mother Teresa's name has become synonymous with charity. She created a global network of homes for poor people, from the hovels of Calcutta to the ghettos of New York and the slums of Albania, her ancestral land. She was one of the first to establish a home for AIDS victims. For more than 45 years, she has comforted destitute old people dying in the gutter, sheltered infants abandoned in trash heaps, soothed the putrid putrid /pu·trid/ (pu´trid) rotten; putrefied. pu·trid adj. 1. Decomposed; foul-smelling; rotten. 2. Proceeding from, relating to, or exhibiting putrefaction. ulcers of lepers and succored the insane. She has also been a powerful voice for conservative dogma, defending her values of life and family and arguing passionately against abortion, contraception and divorce. On Friday, she was alert enough to receive visitors, including the chief minister of the state of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, but could not talk with him because of the respirator equipment on her face, doctors said. At the Vatican, the pope issued a statement hoping for her recovery. ``His holiness wished mother well and hoped for her speedy recovery,'' said Sister Priscilla Lewis of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity Missionaries Of Charity Missionaries of Charity is a Roman Catholic religious order established in 1950, which consists of over 4,500 nuns and is active in 133 countries. Members of the order designate their affiliation using the order's initials, "MC. . At one of Mother Teresa's convents in Calcutta, more than two dozen nuns clad in the familiar blue-trimmed white habit of her order knelt in rows to pray for their leader in a barren white hall. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: Mother Teresa Suffered heart failure |
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