"My mom was way too young to die she was only Forty eight (I'm only twenty five)I feel like she (and I) got cheated out of so much life. She will never see me get married, never see me finish nursing school, never see her grandchildren. AND even though I know life isn't fair I can't help but think how much it totally and utterly sucks. I wonder what the point of living is when the person who brought me into this world is gone. When the most amazing women, my biggest fan, my biggest defender, my best friend ever, is gone?
On November sixteenth two thousand and four my Mom went into the hospital to have gastric bypass surgery. Mom lived in Maine and I in Florida, I flew "home" to Maine to be with her "just in case" not really anticipating that it would, more as a precaution and to get to see her since I hadn't seen her in six months. We waited for hours, four hours longer then the surgery was scheduled to take. FINALLY we got the page that the surgery was over and the doctor would be to talk to us shortly. Instead of coming to talk to us directly like he was supposed to he called on the phone. There had been complications during the surgery, he had had to make a smaller then usual stomach pouch because there was a hole in the BACK of the gastric pouch (stomach) there had also been some leakage from the intestines but they believed they had it all patched up and she would be fine. We had to wait three more hours to see her (even though we were supposed to be able to see her in half an hour). The nurse explained they had had trouble keeping her oxygen stats where they should be, she was on ELEVEN liters of oxygen (norm is two to three liters after surgery), My Mom had never smoked a day in her life and yet she told me a few hours later that her oxygen stats were only eighty% a non smoker should be ninety nine to one hundred%) before the operation!! For the next four days ( she should have been home in four to seven days) my Mom could barely wake up let alone get up and walk. They had her soooo over-medicated that she could barely respond to me and was chewing on her oxygen tubing at points. They ended up dropping her twice, cracking her spleen (which we wouldn't know until later). I tried desperately to get the nurses to understand HOW over-medicated my Mom was. They wouldn't listen to me when I told them she was extremely med sensitive and barely took anything stronger then aspirin.
It has been four days and yet the whole time I have yet to see the doctor who preformed the surgery (mind you I am there pretty much twenty four seven other then getting my dad from work and bringing him into the hospital or going home to get four hours of sleep bring Dad to work and then go see mom. On the fifth day My Dad and I go in to visit first thing in the AM, we walk into Mom's room and she is not there, the bed is made and no sign of my Mom!! I walk to the nurses station and start to freak out on them, they explain my Mom had to be transfered to the ICU, I am irate that no one called but she says they just did it an hour ago and tried to call half and hour ago, probably so as it takes half an hour to get there. That afternoon my Mother's doctor FINALLY shows his face. My mother is on a CPAP (machine which is providing continuous air pressure for my mom to breath easier, only diff between that and a vent is that the tube is not down the throat so it can be taken off) nearly comatose, yet the doctor DARES to tell her that it is all HER fault she is in the ICU because she has not been up and walking like she was supposed to, he pretty much calls her fat and lazy and leaves the room after I give him hell that it is HIS fault he didn't check on her and realize she COULDN'T get up and walk because she is SOOOO over-medicated. I see the doctor again the next day and he says a few things then informs me "that my mother is not a small women" don't I know. I am spitting
and he is lucky he is standing on the other side of the bed so I retort "really do you often do this surgery on barbies?" he mumbles a few more hurried excuses for their incompetence and leaves. By this point it is day six and I had only scheduled one week off, I am supposed to go home and back to college the next day but I can't leave my Mom in this condition. I stay another week, it is touch and go but by the time I leave my Mom actually was doing well enough to sit up and play a few games of cards with me and hold a normal conversation. The last day I got to spend with my mother ALIVE (even though she didn't pass away until= Feb ninth, two thousand five) was thanksgiving two thousand four, in a hospital room, hooked up to IV's and a CPAP at night. I left for the Airport Thanksgiving afternoon, saying goodbye to my Mother not realizing it was REALLY GOODBYE, like goodbye foreverShe gets transferred back to the regular floor two days after I leave and then three days after that she is transferred back to the ICU. She has pneumonia now, they put in a chest tube and collapse her lung. She spends three weeks on a ventilator, they talk about putting in a tracheotomy (a surgical procedure performed on the neck to open a direct airway through an incision in the trachea (the windpipe). Luckily she improves and a few days before Christmas she is taken off the vent. In January she is finally transferred to the rehabilitation wing. While there she must regain her strength and also goes through another surgery, she had gotten a blister on her back as an allergic reaction from some iodine that hadn't gotten wiped off, the blister started out as the size of a large half dollar but requires THIRTY some stitches! She spends until February fifth there and then is finally released to go home. During her stay in rehab she has been on blood thinners because clots have been found in her legs. She is sent home on NO blood thinners, but still I breath a sigh of relief to have her home.
Four days later while babysitting my two and a half year old niece we do the daily ritual of "call, talk Aunt Mer" there is no answer and I leave my Mom a funny sarcastic message about how she is not allowed to be out of the house yet so why isn't she answering my call. Half an hour later I get the call that brings my world crumbling down around me. My little sister calls and tells me that mom had been having severe shortness of breath and the ambulance took her to the hospital. I start to ask if they brought her back to the hospital but Megan interrupts and says she didn't make it. I am too stunned to process this information and ask my sister what she said. She tells me Mom is gone, I must have asked her another dozen times before the reality of what she is telling me sinks in. BUT why now I want to scream! I talk briefly to my father to find out which family members he wants me to call. I call everyone except his mother and my mom's side of the family, who happened to be visiting when it happened.
I used to believe that everything happened for a reason but this, this I can't find a reason for. WHY did she die after getting better and coming HOME? WHY make her suffer those additional months only to take her from us ANYWAY!!!
And the GUILT, if only I had NEVER encouraged her to have this surgery. If only I had done MORE research before encouraging her to have it. I know you're going to say that she was an adult and made her own decisions. BUT she genuinely called to ask my opinion before she even began the long process of getting accepted. You see I was enrolled in nursing school and she was always telling me how proud she was of me for doing this and any time after that that she called me and had a medical question she would say "So nursie" even though I was not (and have not yet finished) my degree for nursing. She took my medical advice VERY seriously! AND later I would find out that she REALLY didn't have all the required tests done she was supposed to to make sure she was a good candidate. I should have been making sure that this was being done, they lead her to believe she had had all these tests done. They let her think she had been tested for sleep apnea; that I now KNOW is the number one complication in gastric bypass surgery and could have told the doctors from her symptoms that she had, which they hadn't.
I'm sorry that was so long I just had to get it off my chest. I just don't know how to continue on without her. I want her back so badly, my heart physically aches for her. I just feel so lost, so hopeless. Like there is never going to be an end to this sadness because I will never see her again (until I die that is). I'm just so tired of hurting this way, of the guilt and of the new bitterness that has crept into my soul."
So that's the whole long, awful story of how my Mom died.
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