That whole trip was a disaster from start to finish! For one thing, I was very obese in the 400 pound rang and could hardly breathe. Then mom goes and she is so weak that needed helped held to the bathroom. I remember crying like a baby in the ER. Here I was, alone, 1000 miles away and all the decisions had to be made by ME!! My dad and husband where in Tucson, getting really to come to San Antonio to live. Don 't give me wrong, it's a pretty city with lots to do, but we didn't feel like seeing anything that day. I noticed my mom getting weaker after the operation to reset her hip. I had clinicals for 8 hours a day, so I'd take my lunch break back to the motel and help her to the bathroom and get her something to eat.
Then, she got STUCK in the chair and couldn't get out. I tried all I could think of and even called my dad, but he said if she was really stuck, and couldn't move, then I should call for help. The fire truck pulled up and I thought Mom would die on the spot when they were coming in and heaving her out of the chair. But, boy, did she feel better!! And then it happened again! The fire department (same crew) came and rescued her a second time. She never sat in that chair again.
Over the next week, she got weaker. I noticed that with her other hip and knee replacements, she got STRONGER, not weaker. The morning I called 911 to take her, she was talking gibberish and to even to her dear father. The paramedics weren' t very nice, though, kept saying, "what can we do about it?" Plenty, jerk wad!
They finally loaded in into the amubulance and I followed behind like Parnelli Jones. I don't know San Antonio very well, afer being just almost 2 wees there. I DO love the "turn out lanes" for idiots like me who don't know what they are doing!!
Luckily the hospital was a short distance away from the motel and would be were I would be working.
In the ER, they did the best they could. Her white cell count was basically non-existent and she had horrible pain in her legs. I couldn't do anything but sit and watch my mother suffer. She told me to go home and rest and come back in the morning. I obeyed my mother, but I wish I hadn't. That was the last time I saw my mother as my mother. When I returned the next morning, she wasn't doing well. Trouble breathing, her heart kept giving out and they were starting CPR. I remember trying to find a freaking parking spot and being scared out of my mind. Here my mother was dying in a building that I couldn't find a parking space for! I finally did find one and was greeted at the door with a wheel chair for me. At 400 pounds, I had a little difficulty breathing and walking at the same time.
They took me outside her room and told me the grim situation. Her kidneys have shut down (causing hallucinations) and lack of urine, her heart had to be restarted 3 times already and they couldn't keep her pressure up, despite three IV blood pressure medications. It was grim indeed. And the came the hardest question a person could ever be asked: "If her heart stops again, do you want us to restart it?" Luckily my mom and aunt from College Station just got there and grandma was telling me, "honey, even if they DO bring her back, she won't be the same. You'd have to put her a nursing home and that is even harder than death. My grandma is a tough ole' gal. She's gone though death all her life, with her father dying with a brain tumor in his 40's, her mother in her 80's and then her husband to Alzheimers and a stroke in July, 1993, at age 72.. I thought every carefully. What would she want? My heart instantly new what to do. "No, she would not want that, to be hooked up to tubes. Just let her go." I thought my crying would never stop, especially when we said goodbye to her. I kissed her cool cheek and never looked back. I knew if I did, I would never leave.
My mom went to be with our Lord Jesus on July 8, 2008, 1 day after her 60th birthday. It just isn't fair!!! I was mad at God for a long time for taking her, then I started feeling a peace over me that she was no longer suffering with arthritis and Lupus. She was finally free and could fly the skies to her heavenly home. We should all be so lucky! There are many ways to die, and hers was in a peaceful manner. She just let go of her spirit and she woas gone in the human sense. In the psychological sense, she will NEVER be gone from my heart.
Grandma helped me in so many ways those first few days of signing papers, getting a morturary to cremate her and she would nag at me to eat. I believe I could have lived off the land for 20 years, but she insisted. Then I started the long journey to Tucson. I had NO clue what to do next. We put our things in a rented storage facitity in San Antonio and haven't had the money to get it back yet. In that stuff are very precious items to me: my mom's Precious Moments figures, her purses, her books, her glasses. And all our furniture. We are going to save up and get it all back and move into an apartment of our own. I will be looking for work, soon, I hope.
I heard from Gina yesterday, and things didn't go well on the way back to Oklahoma. I'll leave the details out, it's Gina's story to tell, anyway. But dear ole' dad is in Michigan. I think he is just scared about being with someone that isn't my mother. I'm no Freud, but every time he gets close to someone, he blows it.
Please pray for me and for Gina during this rough time. I hope they can work it out. I'll end this post with a picture I took when I was much thinner with my mom and grandma at her trailer in Michigan:
God bless us all. And forgive me for my Wednesday post on Tuesday. Now I won't have to worry about tomorrow!! :0)
