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My Mom’s orders!!!

By Robin
Posted on

I had the conversation with my parent.

She told both me and my younger sister to never let her linger, suffer, or prolong death.
 If you call it having the conversation, then ok, but they were my Mom’s orders!!! She told both me and my younger sister to never let her linger, suffer, or prolong death. So on December 18, 2011 after Mom had gone out to dinner with her friend, she came home to her apartment and began doing her laundry  Sometime that night between loads, she had a stroke. For over six hours she laid on the floor.

Around 6:30 am the next morning, my sister and her son found Mom and called 911. She was taken to the hospital around 7:00 am. My sister called me just as my husband was being called in for a procedure at our local hospital. I told my sister that I would get on a plane to California as soon as his procedure was completed.

I arrived at around 6:30 pm and my sister drove us to the hospital to check on our Mom. I entered her room and said “hi Mom it’s Robin” and she said “go home”. She was awake and in alot of pain. She was attached to 14 plus IV’s, and the hospital had not even conducted any scans. I had to push for a glucose test which found that she had an elevated gluclose of 300.

When visiting hours ended at 10:00 pm I left my Mom’s room and told the nursing staff that she needed the scans now and that she did not deserve to be in so much pain. Within an hour of us leaving for the night, we received a call from the hospital asking for permission for a CT scan. Our permission was given immediately.

Twenty minutes later another call came from the hospital that they needed permission to take Mom to surgery to clear the blockage in leg that caused the stroke. By this point it was the middle of the night and I got dressed and found my way to my Mom’s car and drove to the hospital so that a family member would be near by.

I missed giving Mom a kiss and telling her I love you by less than five minutes. I sat in the waiting room with a cup of water waiting for any news of Mom’s condition. As the brought her back from surgury, I told her that I loved her even though she was intibated. I thanked the surgery team and they took her back to critical care the doctor came and told me that they did what the could and the head nurse told me that they would bring me in to see her in twenty minutes.

No one ever came to get me and I sat for hours waiting and asking G-d to take care of her. Around 7:00 am as the shift was changing I asked for a patient advocate and a social worker so that I could get information on my Mom. I tried to get something to eat but two doctors that I did not even know tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to come with them to a conference room. They told me that I had to make a decision regarding my Mom’s life. I told them that they would have to wait for my sister to join me before any decision would be made.

I called my sister who had just taken her son to school (which my Mom had done since my sister’s son was in pre-school.) We both spoke with the doctor and following Mom’s “orders” we signed the forms to stop life support. What no one ever tells you is that it takes over an hour to get the morphin and start the process of taking of the IV’s and turning off the resperator. I blessed her with the Shema and we let her go. Mom died twenty minutes after the equipment was stopped

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