frozenman on 3/1/2010 at 06:27

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(I'll give this another try. I had started writing this thread earlier today, and it bombed during a failed preview, but I still have the need to write a bunch of this down and get it out there, so bear with me)

My mother passed away at 11:41am on Christmas Eve- she was just 58, and I'm 24 and without a mother. There are still hundreds of things left to do, but I feel terrible and empty every moment I take my mind off the fact that she's gone, the more it "heals" the worse I feel.

She went into the hospital on the 17th, just as she was about to leave for the airport for Christmas vacation, where I was to meet her in Vermont. Thank god she called an ambulance before this happened to her on a plane or driving through New Jersey. She was admitted to the hospital for an extremely low red blood cell count, something like 5.4 when the normal is 40-50. For about two weeks she had told me on the phone that her legs were swollen as a result of a sprained ankle, and she said she had been to the doctor and he had given her steroids- I urged her to take it easy and forget the trip if necessary. It turns out that the swollen legs were the first symptoms of liver failure.

My brother arrived by plane from San Francisco at around 5pm on the 18th, and I took the overnight train from Boston into the biggest snow storm maryland has seen in decades, getting in at 6am on the 19th. We had learned from the doctor that she was bleeding internally, and they were going to perform an endoscopy on her ASAP to find out where and if possible stop it, but in the meantime they were beginning blood transfusions, because whereever the bleeding was coming from, her liver wasn't healthy enough to produce the platelets and white blood cells and things generally needed to stop bleeding.

I saw her on the 19th and could speak to her- though she said she wasn't in pain, her speech was halted and came very slowly. Luckily my brother is a resident doctor, in his first year of residency, so he was well aware and able to talk knowledgably about what was going on. She had a nurse attending to her in the ICU 24/7. We spoke to her about letting us clean up her condo so that we could sleep there instead of footing a hotel for the next few days. They had performed the endoscopy and found a large ulcer in her stomach which was the source of the bleeding- they had cauterized it, were continuing transfusions, and simply waiting to see if her condition improved- at that point she was going to be 'downgraded' to a standard nursing ward the next morning.

That night my brother and I set about cleaning up her condo- this is where the shit hit the fan. My mother had lived alone for roughly 6 years, and the condo was simply a trash-heap. Imagine the fight-club house, times 10. There were paths- a path to the bedroom, a path to patio, a path to the bathroom, that's it. Everywhere else was covered in about a foot debris from 6 years of living, if you can call it that. For the most part it wasn't gross rotting trash, but rather: plastic bags, paper, wrapping paper, bills, presents, gift cards, canned food, boxed food, candy, clothes, pictures, etc etc etc. We started shoving shit into trash bags. Over the next two days we accumulated about 30-40 enormous black trash bags- and we're still not finished, but we at least got it to a point where we were able to sleep there- there was a shower, a kitched, and two beds.

The next morning we visited her at the hospital and she sounded weaker and looked generally worse- we tried to talk to her about cleaning up her apartment and getting her to Vermont (she had wanted to move there with family for quite a few years but was in really no condition to get there). She just seemed to look back at us with these scared eyes I had never seen on her face before. She was scared, and embarrased, and I think she knew that this was the end for her.

On Tuesday I had to take my brother back to the airport, he couldn't take forever off- and on the way we received a call from the doctors saying that she had been readmitted to the ICU- the bleeding had started again and they were going to do another endoscopy soon, and started giving her more transfusions. After I dropped my brother off i'm ashamed to say that the first thing I did was get high- I was alone in her apartment now and terrified and some traits pass from mother to son. I visited her about 2 hours later right as they were about to start the endoscopy and got to speak with a few of the doctors in person- they updated me about her condition and had me sign a DNR form.

My mother had made it clear well before she was ever admitted to a hospital, years ago, that if her heart stopped she didn't want CPR or ECG- and although my brother convinced her that a breathing tube or blood pressure medication is advisable, she didn't want to be a vegetable and kept on life support for months and months. Every time I spoke to doctors they had to clarify this- "Just to be clear it says on the form she has a DNR order, except for breathing and blood pressure correct?" - "Yes..."

I came back about an hour after the surgery was completed- the bleeding was stopped for the time being again, and they were continuing the blood transfusions- she was awake, and looked at me, and could manage a few words just barely, but her breathing was so strained it sounded like she was constantly suffocating- and I learned that because of the liver failure, she had enormously high levels of ammonia in her bloodstream, and this was causing her to become delirious and confused- it was like she was in a terrible nightmare, couldn't remember where she was. She could know I was there only when I was in eye sight, but when I would sit down, she would say: "Did Greg come???"

I left after about 15 minutes as it was probably the worst thing I had ever seen. I called my Aunt, my mothers fraternal twin, who arranged to take the first flight up that night. Picking up my aunt at the airport, seeing her for the first time in about 10 years, was a very surreal yet comforting sight. Here was the closest living thing to my mom, she looked exactly like my mom 10 years ago, but with a southern accent, and she even mixed up my name with my brother, calling me Geoff I mean Greg almost every time, just like my mother. I took her to see my mother straight from the airport, we stayed maybe an hour, and then we went home.

The next morning we arrived and had to start making decisions. For one, liver transplant was out of the picture because my mother was an alcoholic, and had drank within the last 6 months. There were a few other surgical options but none of them were described with any sort of optimism by the doctors- and they were all filled with so many other complications (such as, simply having surgery would cause more bleeding and there's no guarentee that they could stop THAT bleeding as well, in which case she would die on the table). We spent several hours, my Aunt, me, and my brother by phone from california, and finally decided that we should honor my mothers wishes- (I deliberately kept this section short because it is so difficult to describe, everything becomes tangential to infinity, so many ifs and buts, if anyone honestly wants to know more...)

at around 3pm on the 23rd they stopped giving her transfusions, removed the breathing tube, gave her a morphine drip, and called in the chaplain. We started calling all her relatives and friends, and held up the phone to her ear so they could say farewell. At this point she looked like she was in a very deep sleep, but I hope and pray that she could hear us- she seemed to fidget every now and then when someone spoke to her. What followed was the longest night...my girlfriend visited and kept my aunt and I company and said some of the sweetest things I'd ever heard, and brought her a little hand-made clay flower which I clipped in her hair. We tried to pass the time talking about memories of my mother, and my aunt told me stories of my mom from her childhood.

Everything about it is so utterly sad. My mother was an alcoholic for years, which caused the liver failure, combined with hepatitis b. From cleaning up her apartment we found dozens and dozens of bottles of aspirin, benadryl, and tylenol pm, and we suspect that she was downing those every night for months, which likely led to the stomach ulcer. She spent days and days alone and with two sons who thought she was too annoying or drunk to return her phone calls or give her the time of day. She was tired of living and only 58. I love her but sometimes she made it so hard to- and I never got a chance to say any of this to her- only when she was in a deep sleep slowly approaching death, and I pray that she heard it.

I spent a large part of Christmas day at the Funeral home arranging for her cremation- I brought a picture of my brother and I at our graduations, as well as a picture of her and her family and slipped them under her hand.

At the moment we're planning to have a service on Mother's Day in Vermont- and spread her ashes on Lake Champlain.

PigLick on 3/1/2010 at 07:43

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I hope you feel a bit better for having verbalized your thoughts. Try not to feel too guilty.

june gloom on 3/1/2010 at 08:06

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Holy fucking ouch. My sympathies, dude.

Namdrol on 3/1/2010 at 09:02

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frozenman, stay strong dude. :(
You loved her and she loved you.

EvaUnit02 on 3/1/2010 at 10:51

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Sorry to hear about your loss, especially for it to happen at Christmas. I wish you and your family my deepest condolences.