Heart Broken

During the week of Christmas 2010, my Mother was feeling weak and tired and falling often suddenly. She suffered from Rheumatoid and Osteopathic Arthritis her and I thought is was a flare up. I called her Doctor of 12 years who felt the same, but he sent a nurse to the house and all vital signs were stable, she said. My Mother did not want to go to the Hospital during Christmas week and the Doctor agreed, but why not a office visit? So very stupid of me. My Mother slept during Christmas and never opened our presents. On December 31st. 2010 she woke up and walked into the living room and collapsed unconscious to the floor. I called 911 and she was taken to the local Hospital, not where her family Doctor was at. After several hours of suffering extreme excruciating abdominal pain, the medical staff determined my Mother was having a bowel obstruction. My Mother was then taken to Surgery as I sat in the waiting room with two friends from my work and another friend from my work stayed at my home with my Father because he suffers from a mental illness. As the clock turned to midnight and January 1st 2011 New Year Eve to New Year Day arrived, so also did the Gastric Surgeon, to tell us he had removed one foot of my Mother’s colon and one foot of her intestines and she had to have a colostomy bag. He told us the colostomy bag would be temporary and in four months he would reserve it. My Mothers recuperation was stable, until the nurses wanted her to stand and walk. My Mother could move her legs in every direction up and down but could not support her little weight of 83lbs to stand up. After further testing it was discovered she sustained blood clots in her legs, the medical staff believe during the surgery and one of the clots lodged in her left lung. She had to have a filter put down through her neck to block any future clots from developing. My Mother was on a blood thinner for the clots but also had a few blood transfusions, because the blood thinners were making her bleed into her colostomy bag. She contracted pneumonia which I was told was aspirated pneumonia and not viral pneumonia because her esophagus had a stricture a narrowing of the opening and she had a hiatal hernia, I was now told. We were told by medical staff my Mother wasn’t allowed to eat or drink in any normal way, but only have a mixture called thick and thin nester. My Mother overcame all the hurdles but still couldn’t stand or walk so it was suggested by medical staff and decided she go to a rehab center for therapy and her expected stay would only be 3 months. With the intensive therapy and lack of nutrition, because of only being on a mixture of thick and thin nectar, her weight went down to 73lbs. and I was told to bring in supplements for her such as Ensure that they didn’t provide. One day in therapy she developed chest pain, which the medical staff at the rehab center took very lightly, since the pain developed at 9am and no one checked her vital signs until 2pm after much fighting I had to do, with them. After finding out my Mother’s heart rate was 125 beats per minute and 77 is normal, I called an ambulance to have her transferred to her family doctor at his hospital, where he did and endoscopy,a procedure to open her esophagus ,so she would be able to eat normal food and begin her recovery soon. After the procedure my Mother never woke fully and was in and out of conscious and for the first time needed oxygen. She never really spoke to me, but held onto my hand. Eighteen hours after the procedure, my Father was talking to her and holding her close in his arms to hear what she was telling him, because he is 90% deaf and as he was doing so, my Mother died in his arms. I always always spent twenty hours a day with my Mother and never left her side and also my Father. Even during the 2011 February winter blizzard in Chicago that we had, I made my way to the Hospital to be with her and had a neighbor snow blow me out of my driveway, I could never be away from her for a day, but on that morning I went into work for a few short hours and had coffee with my boyfriend.. I was on a family medical leave of absence from work but went in occasionally to still keep my job. No one from the hospital had called me to tell me what had happen. I just made my hourly call there to speak with my Mother or Father and I was told Rapid Response was in the room and I should get there as soon as I could. The same friend from work that had stayed with my father while I was at the hospital when my Mother had the surgery on that New Years Eve, left work with me and we both arrived to find my Father holding my Mother. My Father was calling my Mothers name as she lay limp with her eyes bulged and her mouth jaw dropping open, as if she had been electrocuted. I went into shock and I am still there, I am devastated and still in a nervous breakdown. I never touched my Mother and just ran out of the room and screamed until I was held down by medical staff who tried to admit me to the hospital, to make money saying I may be suicidal and my Father also, when we were just grieving for our loss. I can’t function or think or live except to breathe. I still work and try to keep up my house which is no longer a home, since my Mother took her trip to Heaven, but it gets harder everyday and not easier. That’s what Christmas and New Years means to me. I am dying of the broken heart disease.