I knew the day would come, but I wished it would always be in the future...
On Monday, March 28, 2011 at 2:36pm my brother and I wept softly as my mother drifted from our world to the next.... Despite having roughly three times the lethal level of CO2 in her blood she was in a lucid state most of the time able to answer questions and even laugh with us...
It was the most peaceful event, almost completely painless and with the opportunity for us to say our good byes and re-enforce our love for our mother... The only way I could describe it is complete tenderness...
My mother battled with Alpha1-Antitripsin deficiency for nearly 20 years... After the 18th year she received a double lung transplant from a donor unknown to us. That donor and their family gave my mom the opourtunity to live two years past her original due date, and returned 100 percent quality of life to the first year after transplant. For that I am eternally grateful...
Oh sure, I have many regrets as we all do... But I am willing to forget about all of those and focus on my future with my amazing wife and kids...
To my wife, I owe everything now... She loved my mother every bit as much as I do, she nurtured her as if she were her own mother. My kids were ultimately the rock where I turned to for strength in all this... And my brother who's timely arrival allowed us to both give my mom all the love and respect that she deserved... If you were not or are not close to your parents, you will never understand... For my Brother and I we could never repay her for all the amazing sacrifices she did for us... We were not a rich family growing up... My mother scraped by with this and that, and even slept in the living room on the couch because her boys needed the two rooms that were in our childhood home. A home that was free of worry because my mom took care of every necessity we had. For the times when she would go on little or no food so that we could eat, and would be alright with it... Or the way she never spoke badly about anyone including my father after their breakup... She just simply said, you will come to understand as you grow up...
My Dear "Mommy" I will love and miss you forever, but I will hold steadfast the moral values and intelligence you instilled in us. You "ARE" the best mommy two boys could have ever had...
My mother, was very organized and kept everything that would and could become a memory some day... We never really looked into her stuff while she lived with us, but now that we are going through it looking for insurance papers etc we have been finding papers/books with notes and poems scattered all throughout... Poems that tell us how she feels about people and events in her life... She did this for our comfort and knew we would find them sooner or later... What an amazing gift this is to me.. I will cherish them forever and will share them with all of her grand children and my brother...
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Day two...
Sunday morning, we, the family get ready in Brampton to go visit nanna.... Our expectation is that she will be groggy and unable to speak because of the intubation.... But despite this we hope to be able to wake her up and calm her down etc.... So away we go in the car... Grab a little Macdonalds for breakfast and head down to the hospital...
Nanna no longer looks grey and void of life... The color is back in her flesh and she is not cold to the touch in her hands and feet... But she is, completely sedated... They sedated her because the fussing and panic can be really bad when you have a tube in your lungs helping you breat, and a central line in your neck going to your heart, not to mention the dozens of other tubes bringing fluid to and from every function of your body...
All day though, she remains sleepy and un wakeable despite the discontinuued sedation.
I finally take the family home at 7pm and we get a night of restles sleep...
Nanna no longer looks grey and void of life... The color is back in her flesh and she is not cold to the touch in her hands and feet... But she is, completely sedated... They sedated her because the fussing and panic can be really bad when you have a tube in your lungs helping you breat, and a central line in your neck going to your heart, not to mention the dozens of other tubes bringing fluid to and from every function of your body...
All day though, she remains sleepy and un wakeable despite the discontinuued sedation.
I finally take the family home at 7pm and we get a night of restles sleep...
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Full circle.
I sit here, 10th floor just outside the MSICU department with my family... I'll upload a photo later, but basically it's a large waiting room for families who have loved ones in the critical care units. In a lot of ways it reminds me of a jail... You need to phone when you want to enter and they dictate when and how you can visit etc...
My life is changing again... My yesterday was full of tomorrows... What's gonna happen to us? where we gonna be? How we gonna cope with what's going on.... The tears flowed from my eyes as I begged for hugs from my kids and wife. My body quaked.. And my mind spun around at an alarming rate...
No, this wasn't a scene from the latest horror movie the teens all want to see... It was the brutal reality that my mother is very sick, so sick in fact that she is now in ICU and we are not sure what the outcome will be. We are taking it one step at a time... I have not spoken to my mom since Friday night when I said good night to her and asked her to try to get a good sleep so we can decide if we are going to take her back to the doctors or not. I went to bed exhausted from the week and was thinking this weekend we would take the usual step and bring her to Emerg at TGH so that she could be put on IV antibiotics because the oral ones are not doing anything to help her... But as per usual, things didin't go as planned...
I'll explain yesterday in as condensed form as possible...
I woke up at 8:18am realized that my wife was getting ready for work... So as usual I made my way up to my mothers bed room to begin the waking process... The past few days it had been getting difficult to wake her. Extra groggy and generally just not making sense. "Good morning mom, wakey wakey..." No response.... Her hearing has been a bit poor lately so I tried again "Mom, wake up lazy bones..." Grumble grumble was my reply... A nonsense response so I was worried... A few gentle taps on the shoulder and she began to come around she turned and looked at me briefly, as I walked away I said "you rest mamma you had a rough night again." At athat point I went to the timmies to get the women of the house their daily coffee... Extra large double doubles... Also to drive my wife to work... When I returned I once again tried to wake her but she just wouldn't... Just grumbles and moans. I asked her to sit up and she did, but then things started turning sour from there... she was losing consciousness... I could see she was choking on her own sputum and the color of it was horrid... I grabbed a kleenex and asked her to spit into it as I passed the phone to my daughter with 911 already entered but understandably my daughter was too upset to complete the call so with phone in one hand, kleenex in the other and mom slumped over on my arm I spoke in a calm voice to the person on the other end.
"911 - Do you need Police, Fire or Ambulance?" "Ambulance please!", I reply...
I explain that my mom is post transplant by two years and she has been fighting an infection with antibiotics, but that her breating is very shallow and she is slumped over in my arms barely conscious. "She's not answering my questions"
The person on the line is listening to me as I put the dogs in a secure location, she assures me that ambulance is on the way. I ask my mom to make a cough to get the sputum out and a few tries later out comes a blob of bright red goo... I tell the lady on the phone who I can now hear relaying some kind of special code over the radio for "Hurry the HELL UP!" and things get intense, for me... My composure still completly calm in appearance and very put together.... The list goes through my mind... Dogs are away, kids are up.. .Oh wait, my youngest boy is still at his friends from sleepover a few doors down... ok, that's now on my to do list... A few moments later I hear someone open the front door and say hello... "THE DOGS ARE LOCKED UP IT'S SAFE TO COME IN!", I say... "Thanks! Are you in the kitchen?" she says, and I answer promptly "YES!, I am holding my mother. She comes into the bedroom followed by six other people, three fire department members and three other people who I think are paramedics. Things from then on in become a blur to me but I do remember the So2 reading on the meter at 40 and the paramedic saying on her radio "Breathing is shallow, stats critical we are on our way!" Explaining the situation as best as I can to them and trying to remember this and that I am now beginning to fall apart because I realise that my mother is dying at this point... As we are leaving the house with my mom in a restraint she stops me hands on my shoulder and briefly relays the critical nature of this situation, a fact that I already knew. her next question blurs my mind but it is one that I knew the answer too from many conversations with my mother... "Has your mother ever talked to you about her wishes? As far as being recussitated?" (pardon my spelling) I answer confidently, "Yes, she wants full recussitation! She has talked to us many times about this and also about what to do at the appropriate stage in her failures." She repeats to me what I said... "Ok, so your mom wants to be recussitated?" "Yes!" I answer... They rush away but not before she gets one more "I need you to understand that the situation does not look good at this time..."
--------------------------
(I need to return to MSICU right now so I will continue to blog about when we arrived at the hospital later)
___________________
I'm back... had a full day yesterday...
Today, two days later I am sitting in her room... The hospital provides free internet access which is totally amazing for me because I live next to a computer. 24 hours a day 7 days a week I am connected to the internet... It is my security blanket, and the way I communicate with the world...
So to continue with the story... There were no ICU beds available at the Brampton Civic hospital... A situation that I both expect and was happy about... Why happy? Well because, while Brampton civic would try very hard to help my mom.. They in fact saved her life, the nurse who intubated her did a great job at guessing the size of her lungs, and in fact was only out by about 3 percent... AMAZING!, and also life saving because if you guess the size wrong and start inflating too much you can burst the lung... As you can imagine that is a really bad scenario... But it did not happen and I am grateful to them for being right in their educated guess...
So, the Dr explains to me that there are no ICU beds and that they are contacting other hospitals to see which one would be able to take her in... I jump in and tell him that I will call Toronto General where she had the original transplant and make arrangements... So out comes my telephone and I make a call to the switch board since that is the only number I had available...
Well, instantly I am met with resistance when I ask them to have one of the lung transplant team call the Dr at brampton civic... "Sorry sir, but only a doctor can arrange a transfer, I can not help you... Get the doctor to call..." I explain to her that it is the doctor who I talked with and he thought it was a great idea, he even gave me his number and extension and printed his name so that someone could call him back... ER doctors are extremely busy and don't really have time to fuss about with this sort of clerical work... So frustrated, I hang up the phone but not before she lets slip out the name of the on call dr from the transplant team...
FANTASTIC... I get an idea in my head... I make another call.. This time it goes like this...
Switch Board: "Toronto General Hospital, how may I direct your call?"
Me: "Good morning, I am calling from the Brampton Civic Hospital, I need to have Dr _____ paged to the following number my name is Dr ________"
Switch Board: "Would you like to hold while I transfer you or do you still want Dr ______ Paged?"
Me: "Please page them for me thank you."
Switch Board: "OK Dr, I have paged Dr _____ to the number you provided, is there anything else I can help you with?"
Me: "No, thank you that is all..."
And I hang up... WOO HOO within 5 minutes The Brampton Dr got a call from the Toronto Dr and they arrange the transfer to the Toronto General Hospital... This I also consider a move that was critical in her care... After all, everything about my mom and her transplant including the actual size of the lungs in her chest is documented here...
My life is changing again... My yesterday was full of tomorrows... What's gonna happen to us? where we gonna be? How we gonna cope with what's going on.... The tears flowed from my eyes as I begged for hugs from my kids and wife. My body quaked.. And my mind spun around at an alarming rate...
No, this wasn't a scene from the latest horror movie the teens all want to see... It was the brutal reality that my mother is very sick, so sick in fact that she is now in ICU and we are not sure what the outcome will be. We are taking it one step at a time... I have not spoken to my mom since Friday night when I said good night to her and asked her to try to get a good sleep so we can decide if we are going to take her back to the doctors or not. I went to bed exhausted from the week and was thinking this weekend we would take the usual step and bring her to Emerg at TGH so that she could be put on IV antibiotics because the oral ones are not doing anything to help her... But as per usual, things didin't go as planned...
I'll explain yesterday in as condensed form as possible...
I woke up at 8:18am realized that my wife was getting ready for work... So as usual I made my way up to my mothers bed room to begin the waking process... The past few days it had been getting difficult to wake her. Extra groggy and generally just not making sense. "Good morning mom, wakey wakey..." No response.... Her hearing has been a bit poor lately so I tried again "Mom, wake up lazy bones..." Grumble grumble was my reply... A nonsense response so I was worried... A few gentle taps on the shoulder and she began to come around she turned and looked at me briefly, as I walked away I said "you rest mamma you had a rough night again." At athat point I went to the timmies to get the women of the house their daily coffee... Extra large double doubles... Also to drive my wife to work... When I returned I once again tried to wake her but she just wouldn't... Just grumbles and moans. I asked her to sit up and she did, but then things started turning sour from there... she was losing consciousness... I could see she was choking on her own sputum and the color of it was horrid... I grabbed a kleenex and asked her to spit into it as I passed the phone to my daughter with 911 already entered but understandably my daughter was too upset to complete the call so with phone in one hand, kleenex in the other and mom slumped over on my arm I spoke in a calm voice to the person on the other end.
"911 - Do you need Police, Fire or Ambulance?" "Ambulance please!", I reply...
I explain that my mom is post transplant by two years and she has been fighting an infection with antibiotics, but that her breating is very shallow and she is slumped over in my arms barely conscious. "She's not answering my questions"
The person on the line is listening to me as I put the dogs in a secure location, she assures me that ambulance is on the way. I ask my mom to make a cough to get the sputum out and a few tries later out comes a blob of bright red goo... I tell the lady on the phone who I can now hear relaying some kind of special code over the radio for "Hurry the HELL UP!" and things get intense, for me... My composure still completly calm in appearance and very put together.... The list goes through my mind... Dogs are away, kids are up.. .Oh wait, my youngest boy is still at his friends from sleepover a few doors down... ok, that's now on my to do list... A few moments later I hear someone open the front door and say hello... "THE DOGS ARE LOCKED UP IT'S SAFE TO COME IN!", I say... "Thanks! Are you in the kitchen?" she says, and I answer promptly "YES!, I am holding my mother. She comes into the bedroom followed by six other people, three fire department members and three other people who I think are paramedics. Things from then on in become a blur to me but I do remember the So2 reading on the meter at 40 and the paramedic saying on her radio "Breathing is shallow, stats critical we are on our way!" Explaining the situation as best as I can to them and trying to remember this and that I am now beginning to fall apart because I realise that my mother is dying at this point... As we are leaving the house with my mom in a restraint she stops me hands on my shoulder and briefly relays the critical nature of this situation, a fact that I already knew. her next question blurs my mind but it is one that I knew the answer too from many conversations with my mother... "Has your mother ever talked to you about her wishes? As far as being recussitated?" (pardon my spelling) I answer confidently, "Yes, she wants full recussitation! She has talked to us many times about this and also about what to do at the appropriate stage in her failures." She repeats to me what I said... "Ok, so your mom wants to be recussitated?" "Yes!" I answer... They rush away but not before she gets one more "I need you to understand that the situation does not look good at this time..."
--------------------------
(I need to return to MSICU right now so I will continue to blog about when we arrived at the hospital later)
___________________
I'm back... had a full day yesterday...
Today, two days later I am sitting in her room... The hospital provides free internet access which is totally amazing for me because I live next to a computer. 24 hours a day 7 days a week I am connected to the internet... It is my security blanket, and the way I communicate with the world...
So to continue with the story... There were no ICU beds available at the Brampton Civic hospital... A situation that I both expect and was happy about... Why happy? Well because, while Brampton civic would try very hard to help my mom.. They in fact saved her life, the nurse who intubated her did a great job at guessing the size of her lungs, and in fact was only out by about 3 percent... AMAZING!, and also life saving because if you guess the size wrong and start inflating too much you can burst the lung... As you can imagine that is a really bad scenario... But it did not happen and I am grateful to them for being right in their educated guess...
So, the Dr explains to me that there are no ICU beds and that they are contacting other hospitals to see which one would be able to take her in... I jump in and tell him that I will call Toronto General where she had the original transplant and make arrangements... So out comes my telephone and I make a call to the switch board since that is the only number I had available...
Well, instantly I am met with resistance when I ask them to have one of the lung transplant team call the Dr at brampton civic... "Sorry sir, but only a doctor can arrange a transfer, I can not help you... Get the doctor to call..." I explain to her that it is the doctor who I talked with and he thought it was a great idea, he even gave me his number and extension and printed his name so that someone could call him back... ER doctors are extremely busy and don't really have time to fuss about with this sort of clerical work... So frustrated, I hang up the phone but not before she lets slip out the name of the on call dr from the transplant team...
FANTASTIC... I get an idea in my head... I make another call.. This time it goes like this...
Switch Board: "Toronto General Hospital, how may I direct your call?"
Me: "Good morning, I am calling from the Brampton Civic Hospital, I need to have Dr _____ paged to the following number my name is Dr ________"
Switch Board: "Would you like to hold while I transfer you or do you still want Dr ______ Paged?"
Me: "Please page them for me thank you."
Switch Board: "OK Dr, I have paged Dr _____ to the number you provided, is there anything else I can help you with?"
Me: "No, thank you that is all..."
And I hang up... WOO HOO within 5 minutes The Brampton Dr got a call from the Toronto Dr and they arrange the transfer to the Toronto General Hospital... This I also consider a move that was critical in her care... After all, everything about my mom and her transplant including the actual size of the lungs in her chest is documented here...
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