Mama

On Wednesday February 20, 2008 at 4:30am, I received a call that I have always prayed I’d never receive.My neice called to tell me that Joe had to call an ambulance for Mama because she couldn’t breathe.She just turned 65 in January and she has smoked for 50 years (she started at age 15), so when she gets something as simple as a cold, she coughs more than usual and breathes a little harder. Mama was deathly afraid of doctors, hospitals, needles..etc. so to get her to go to the doctor was almost impossible. I say almost because she would go for her blood pressure and cholesterol medicine. Other than that? Forget it. And if the doctor mentioned running any tests? Forget it. She would not budge and we wouldn’t and couldn’t force her.

Mama had spent the previous weekend with me, Alan and the girls (15th - 17th) and I could tell that she didn’t feel good, but Mama really hasn’t felt “good” for quite some time. I figured she was either getting another kidney infection (she would get a lot of those) or she was coming down with the flu (it was going around BAD here at the time).

She went home on Sunday after church and that night she started running a fever. Sunday through Tuesday she kept running a fever and coughing. My sister took cough medicine over there for her and poor Joe had his hands full with Mama and Levi, who had the stomach virus.

At 4:30 Wednesday morning my phone rings. It’s my neice telling me that Mama is going to the hospital. I find out later that this lady, who is terrified of hospitals and doctors, woke Joe (my brother) up to tell him she can’t breathe. He asked her if she wanted him to call an ambulance and she said yes. When they get Mama in the ambulance and stick her with the needle to start her IV…she changes. Her eyes are fixed (staring up) and she won’t respond. She had scared herself into a heart attack.

When they get her to the ER, the doctor there (who was WONDERFUL) was also scared she’d had a stroke, so he ordered an MRI. That MRI came back clear, but Mama still wouldn’t respond. The oxygen mask really wasn’t enough, so they intubated her before her doctor (don’t get me started on that so-called doctor) sends her to Jackson.

I won’t give a daily account of our stay in Jackson, but I will say that it was an emotional rollar coaster ride. Here is the list of things that was wrong with/happened to Mama over the past two weeks:

Influenza
Heart Attack
Congestive Heart Failure
Chest Infection that went Septic
Kidney Failure - they came back to producing urine before she died, but not filtering
Stroke

We had one day with her in the hospital where she knew who we were and talked to us. I don’t mean we carried on a conversation with her, but we asked her if she knew who we were and she shook her head yes and then said our names. We asked her if she knew how much we loved her and she shook her head yes. We showed her a picture of her and all the grandkids and she smiled. She told us she was hot, she told us she was thirsty and she asked for ice chips.

Then at the 9:00am visit the next morning? Mama wouldn’t respond at all. She wouldn’t even open her eyes. That was like a kick in the gut after getting our hopes so high the day before.

Then Sunday March 2nd, Mama’s blood pressure bottomed out and they told us we might want to call in the family because they didn’t think she’d make it through the day. They were giving her meds to lower her heart rate because it kept running high. She held on though (I think she just wanted to prove to them that they aren’t God and don’t have a say in when people die) and her condition didn’t change either way through Tuesday…when her heart stopped.

Before the 5:00pm ICU visit…about 15 minutes before…we were in the ICU waiting room waiting to go up to see Mama when we hear them call over the intercom: Code Blue - Tower B - SICU - 2nd Floor. Joe looked at me and said, “I have a bad feeling that’s Mama”. We go up there and the nurse comes out to get us. The doctor comes out of her room and takes us back to the Family Room and tells us that her heart stopped when they got her back to her room (they did a new scan to see why she still wasn’t responding). They shocked her 3 times and give her a shot of something to bring her BP back up.

She holds her own through-out the night and early the next morning her doctor calls us out in the hall. It looked as if she might have had another stroke because the “shadow” on the scan was bigger than before. Her kidneys had come back but wasn’t filtering and they would have to keep giving her meds to bring her BP up and even then it wouldn’t go up to normal. She held it steady at 80something / 20something all night.

She would have no quality of life and my Mama did NOT want that. Thankfully we listened to her when she tried to tell us her wishes in a situation like that.

They were going to move her out of ICU into a room so we could stay with her without interuption, but she never made it.

My sister and I went to the cafeteria and my brother stayed with Mama. Then he came down and said Mama’s BP was dropping. Not long after that (we’re talking minutes), her nurse calls Joe’s cell phone to tell him her BP had dropped more and if we wanted to be with her, we needed to come back up.

We were with Mama when she took her last breath. It was peaceful and I am so thankful for that. It started with the 4 of us and it ended with the 4 of us. I think that’s how Mama would’ve wanted it.