Tuesday, October 14, 2014...my husband rented the movie "Heaven Is For Real" with Greg Kinnear and I watched it with my family and children. It's a true story about a child who has a near death experience and visits heaven while he's in the hospital. On Wednesday, I went to church and youth group like normal. Our youth minister preached about Johann Sebastian Bach and about how before he sat down to compose a masterpiece, he would write J.J. on the work which translated to "Jesus, help me..." and when he was done, he would write S.D.G which stood for Soli Deo Gloria, "To the glory of God alone"...I remember everything about that week. After youth, a young lady gave me a precious vial of frankincense oil as a gift. On Thursday morning, the first day of Fall break, I found out why...
Thursday, October 16, 2014
First day of Fall break, I'm sleeping in...I had a dream that I was sitting on a couch watching a movie with my Dad. On the screen was a woman floating up to the sky. She was sort of dancing and floating...kind of like Cirque du Soleil or something. Then, we were watching her float through the sky and wispy clouds and my Dad said, "That's her, it's her time to go." and in my dream he hugged me and rocked me back and forth and we both cried.
Phone Rings...wakes me up...
It's my Dad. He says there's something wrong with my Mom and she's acting the same way she was acting when she went to the hospital via ambulance for the overdose last January. During the overdose the January before, I had just been at the hospital with friends who were going through a miscarriage. I had just been at the ER. My sister was trying to call me from Tulsa to ask me to check on my Mom. I didn't. I thought, "I've been through this before with Mom...I've taken her to the ER before and left her there..." It was like, "Oh no, not again." This time was different. I knew I needed to go. I got to my Mom's house and talked to her, she was in pain in her stomach. I asked her if she wanted me to call an ambulance, my Dad had offered, but she refused. She asked me to call 911. It took them forever to get there because there was another accident that morning on Southgate road and the other ambulance was tied up. When they got there, the fire department was the first to arrive, and they asked her how she felt, she said, "I feel like I'm dying..." We started to tell them about her prior overdose because we didn't know what was wrong. They started looking around at her medications and saw she had taken a lot of Tramadol for pain. I followed them to the ER and my Dad went to work. My Dad assumed it was like before and he was just going to wait for an update from me. I talked to the ER doctors and told them the same thing about the prior overdoses and by then, they could see her records on the screen. They noted when they listened to her stomach though, there weren't any bowel sounds, it was silent and they said that wasn't normal. They took her for a CTscan and I left to grab a quick shower at home, change clothes, and grab a quick bite of cereal at home. My husband stayed home with the kids and I headed back up to the hospital. The doctor was very concerned. He told me that the scan revealed an intestinal blockage and infection as well as several large masses on her liver. It took me awhile to understand what he was saying, but after awhile of trying to explain it to me, he just finally said, "All I'm trying to tell you is that whatever is wrong with her is nothing of her own doing." which meant she hadn't overdosed, those masses could possibly be tumors and the tumors could possibly be cancer although he could not confirm that then. They said they were admitting her to ICU and I went to the ER waiting room and called my family and cried.
What then ensued was a hellish 24-day ride. They initially diagnosed her with intestinal ischemia in her colon which meant that part of her colon had calcified, broken off, lodged into another part of her intestine, and part of her colon had died and that's what caused the initial infection and pain. The second issue were the tumors. A surgeon did emergency exploratory surgery on her and did a colostomy. She had a colostomy bag and while he was in there, he discovered a grapefruit sized tumor on her liver and an orange sized one next to it. She woke up after the first surgery in ICU and overheard the doctors telling my sister about her "tumor markers". She then told my sister she was "done" and she was "through". She motioned for her to shut everything off and unhook her from everything. She was giving up. She didn't want anything done. She couldn't really truly verbally communicate with us though, so we wanted to wait until we could really talk to her before we told the doctors anything. The first surgery did not work as she got ischemia in the second artery and it turned gray and we almost lost her in a matter of days. My sister talked to my Mom and asked her, "Mommy, do you know Jesus? Do you know if you died that you would go to heaven?" and she nodded "Yes". The doctor had to come on a Sunday night and ask us what we wanted to do. We had a dilemma because we knew our Mom had already expressed she was done. We knew she had cancer. We thought, "Do we do the second surgery, she is already so weak from the first surgery, will she make it through a second surgery, is she strong enough, will this kill her?" All these questions. On the other hand, "We want more time with her, we want to talk to her, are we just extending the inevitable?" We asked the surgeon what to do and he said, "I can't tell you what to do, I can only give you my professional, medical opinion." He said, "My professional medical opinion is that if I don't operate tonight, she's got no shot...she's maybe got 24 hours." So, we all lined up to tell her goodbye before the surgery. I remember telling her I loved her and that they were going to fix the pain in her tummy and make her feel better. She nodded her head. So, he operated on her at 9:00 at night. We got some time.
Later, the oncologist came and told us she had metastatic poorly differentiated carcinoma of the liver. Metastatic means it moves around from organ to organ quickly, and "poorly differentiated" means they don't know exactly where it originated. They think GI tract. He said she was in Stage 4 and she had 3-6 weeks, 3 months at the most. God gave us 24 days from October 16th to November 8th, the day she died. It was FAST. I have talked to people who have battled cancer along with their loved ones and have watched them suffer for months or years. Some even said they prayed for God to take their loved one so that they wouldn't have to watch them suffer. We got 24 days. It was a gift of grace and mercy from God.
All I can say to describe how I was feeling through all of this is to say, I sort of wasn't feeling a lot. I just mean that instead of taking on all the weight of it and feeling the full brunt of it, I was too busy going through it to really stop and think about how I felt. Numb at times, broken and crying at times, trying to go on with life with my husband and children at times, and just toughening up to get through it. You sort of do whatever you have to do to get through it. Like gird yourself for battle so to speak. You keep waking up, you keep going, you're not really hungry but you eat, you're not really sleepy, but you sleep. Like my Dad says, it was a "whirlwind". The doctors initially told us not to talk to her about it because they didn't want the stress of the news to hamper her healing from the surgeries and infection. So, we didn't talk about it with her. She knew, and the surgeon told her, but we didn't talk about it with her. We all sort of pretended it wasn't happening. At one point, a nurse came and showed me and my sister how to take care of my Mom's colostomy bag "for when she goes home". Later, this made me angry because I thought, "Why did I even have to learn that if she was never going to go home?" Initially, the only dream I ever had about it was being home with her taking care of her colostomy bag. Also, early in the process before the official diagnosis from the oncologist, a case worker with the hospital came and told us about my Mom's home care "when she is discharged from ICU". Why did they talk to us about that when she was never going to make it home? Also, when she was intubated, the tube was crooked in her mouth and pinching the side of her mouth and caused a sore and part of her skin to be ripped off when they moved it. This also happened when they took the tape off by her ostomy opening. Later, this made me really mad and I thought, "She was already in so much pain, why did they have to hurt her more unnecessarily?" Just some crazy things that upset me for weird reasons.
When the day got closer, things really started to change. She stopped eating, she started sleeping a lot more, she was in a lot more pain. She didn't really know who we were anymore. She talked to people who weren't there. She would be talking to us, then she would close her eyes and say out loud, "No, I can't go with you right now, I have to stay here..." or "I'm not going over there right now...I'm staying..." The time I remember the most is when she did this while I was talking to her. I was getting ready to leave, she said something and I said, "Mom, are you talking to me?" and she shook her head "No" and then I started walking away and she closed her eyes and I heard her say, "That's it...I like it when we go back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth..." She literally had a foot in each world. Later, the hospital staff gave us a book about her transition into death and what to look for and to explain how we were supposed to let go. It was written by a hospice nurse who knew all the signs. My Mom would get tremors and her muscles would spasm. Her fingertips started to turn purple. She refused to eat. She slept all the time. One night, my sister said my Mom opened her eyes, looked up, raised her arms and her feet made the motion as if she was running to Someone. Amazing. It was beautiful. But it's hard to get left behind.
I remember watching TV with her and looking in the mirror across the room and trying to memorize her face in the bed. I can still see it. I remember how she reached over the side of the bed to hold my hand for awhile. I loved my mother's hands, and now I wish I had a picture I've seen some have of holding their mother's hand. I talked to her a lot. I told her I wished I was a better daughter and I was sorry for not seeing her more and spending more time with her. I thanked her for taking care of me when I was sick. My Mom was sick a lot and she was in the hospital a lot, but not all the memories were bad. She had well days, well months, and well years. She held my hair back when I threw up, and she gave me a cool wash cloth when I had a fever. Before she had her stroke, we used to go on long drives together. We'd drive out of Enid on 412 listening to Magic 104.1 or KXLS. We'd do the request hour late at night and her most favorite song to request was "Careless Whisper" by George Michael from WHAM. I remember listening to her records in her bedroom. Her favorite was "The Proud One" by The Osmonds. She loved watching old black and white movies and her favorite movie was "Somewhere In Time" with Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve. She also loved Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor and epic movies like "Cleopatra" "The Ten Commandments", "Ben Hur" and "Gone With the Wind". She also loved horror movies and I saw every single one growing up, "The Howling", "Fright Night", "Dracula", "Silver Bullet", "Halloween", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Friday the 13th"...you name it, we saw it. We had family game nights sometimes. My Mom loved to play cards...rummy and gin rummy. My sister Kim bought her some cards in the hospital but they never got to play. They also talked about going for a drive, but they never got to go. One day, a little over a week before she died, my Mom said to me, "Your birthday is coming up..." (Christmas Day) and she asked me what I wanted....I told her maybe a cookbook or some cooking supply things. Then, I turned around and tried not to cry in front of her...I somehow knew she wouldn't be there for my birthday.
The closer it got, the more I began to detach. When I was a little girl, any time there was a storm or tornado coming, I would want to go to sleep and pretend it wasn't happening. I would want to get in my bed, throw the covers over my head, and wake up when it was all over. Growing up, our basement would often flood and my Mom would take us to St. Mary's to hide in their basement until the storm would blow over. She freaked out over severe weather and tornadoes and would go to the bank, withdraw some money, and head for cover at the hospital. I grew up being afraid of storms. Well, this was a storm and we were already at the hospital, so where was I supposed to go? I stayed home.
November 7th, 2014 I saw my Mom for the last time. I visited for about 2 or 3 hours, my sister called and asked me what her vitals were, they tried to take them from her leg and they wouldn't even register. When I came in the room, I kissed her and she was warm and golden. When I left, her color began to change...like a shadow came over her face and she was ashen and cooler when I kissed her goodbye. I told her it was okay for her to go and I was ready. I walked away, turned around, took one last look and thought, "That's the last time I am gonna see her." and I left. That evening my sister called and said, "So do you want to be here when it happens or do you just want me to call you?" I said, "I don't have to be there in order to have closure...I think I just want you to call me." Then I battled with the entire decision. I should be there with my dad, sister, and grandma. She called back later to give me an update and to say, "I am going to pick up grandma to bring her up here, Dad is on his way..." and she asked to talk to my husband. He said, "Honey, you don't want to know what is going on now. You're not going up there." I said, "What? Why?" and he proceeded to tell me that since her body was shutting down and due to the nature of her surgery, she was basically vomiting excrement out of her mouth and nose. I said, "No, I cannot handle that. I will stay home." Later my sister texted and said my Dad was wondering where my husband was, so my husband went up to the hospital and stayed with my family until my Mom died the next morning.
I hunkered down in bed with my children and tried to fall asleep. I talked to my sister in Edmond, I texted with my sister in the hospital and with my husband. I asked him to play some worship music for my Mom. He played the same CD that I played in the delivery room as both our kids were born. It's sort of a lullaby CD. Later I asked him what song was playing when she died and he said, "Jesus Loves Me". I fell asleep around 2am and woke up at 6am with a start and looked at my phone, no news. I texted my husband and said, "What is happening?" and he said, "Soon." and he said, "Probably in the next 30 minutes or so." so I actually set my phone for 30 minutes and started the timer. I said, "What's going on?" and he said, "Her breathing is different." and I said, "Different than when you first got there?" and he said, "Yes, very different." Then I got stomach cramps and felt like I was going to throw up...he called me not even a minute later and said, "She's gone."
He came home from the hospital, my daughter ran to give him a hug and she said, "Daddy, you smell like Grandma!" and then she said, "Daddy, heaven is for real!"
When we went to see her at the funeral home, the first thing my son said was, "She looks healed." Yes son, she is. She is finally whole, finally free, her mind is perfect, and her body is healthy. She is fully known by the One who made her. She is in the presence of Love.
Growing up I had a lot of dreams of being lost inside a hospital. I think it's because my Mom was sick so much and in the hospital so much. After she died, I had the same dream again...my Mom was looking for me and asking the nurses where I was. I really think I was dealing with a lot of guilt and regret from not being there with her. What I am dealing with now is guilt and regret from not spending more time with her when I could. If she were here now, I'd still be neglecting her, forgetting her, and staying away from her. What is also hard now is my Mom went away a lot when I was growing up, but she always came back. It's like I'm still waiting for her to come back.
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