Howdy gang,
I have
been working on this post for almost a month now. I had initially intended on
posting it on October 3rd, but it wasn’t quite ready at the time. I
kicked around the idea of just holding on to it until mid November (for reasons
that will become clear by the end of this post), but it has been kicking around
in my brain and on my computer and I think now is really as good of a time as
any I guess. All of this being said, you will quickly find that this is not my
typical Fatterhood post. There won’t be much for humor this time, but I won’t
lie to you…I am really putting my heart out for the entire Internet to see.
There are parts of this story that only my wife and a handful of extremely
close friends know; but seeing as it is a part of my history, it is now a part
of Elizabeth’s. At heart I have always envisioned Fatterhood as an extremely
long letter to Elizabeth. So…here I go and I hope you stick with me and enjoy
the ride.
On
October 3rd 2013, I got a call while I was at work from my
Uncle/Godfather telling me that he and my Aunt had taken my Ma to the hospital
due to unexplained profuse bleeding. I immediately asked if everything was okay
and he said that there really wasn’t anything that I could do at that moment
anyways. She was having some tests done and that the doctors had a few ideas,
but that it didn’t sound like too much to worry about. Of course I worried. I
finished out my shift at the Crimson Plus Sign and bolted to the hospital. She
was resting comfortably in her room, talking and joking around with my Aunt and
Uncle. There still weren’t any test results to be had, but they did start to
give her a platelet transfusion that afternoon. We all sat and talked and
eventually my Aunt and Uncle left to go home. My wife left work early too and
met Ma and I at the hospital, but in true Ma fashion, she wanted us to go home
since there wasn’t anything to do but wait anyways. I made her promise to call
me as soon as she heard anything and my wife and I went home.
Around
7pm that evening Ma called my cell and told me that the results were in and
that she most likely had some form of leukemia. I knew immediately that no
matter what she said that she was terrified because her 1st fiancé had
died of leukemia. Not knowing what to
say at such a moment, my caveman brain could only come up with, “Are you
shitting me?”. He simply replied “No.” I asked what the game plan was, what she
need from us, who was watching the dog, did she want me to come back to the
hospital? I essentially asked ALL of the questions. My wife and I lived only a
few miles from the hospital at that time so we raced back over to be with her
while we figured stuff out. By the time we got there we found out that there
was already a plan to send her to Mayo in Rochester Minnesota. If you aren’t from
our neck of the woods, Mayo hospital in Rochester is world renowned for its
medical care, the Pope had been seen there at one time and even Mr. Burns from The Simpsons went there, but you don’t
go there for a cold. If you go to Mayo it means it is serious. They transported
her there late that night and my wife and I went home and started working on
our own game plan.
The
next day we set up a meeting with her new Doctor at Mayo in the late afternoon.
Again, Ma didn’t want us “making a fuss over her” so she told us to stay home.
I made the terrible choice of going to work instead of staying home. I figured
at the time that I might as well keep my mind and hands busy instead of just
pacing our apartment worrying, but since I was so distracted I was next to
worthless at work. I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn when it came to
sticking needles in people. I was a wreck. My boss ended up sending me home
early once I filled her in on what was going on. My wife and I packed up and
hit the road to Rochester, that would end up being the 1st of many,
many, many trips.
We got
to Mayo and chatted with Ma for a bit before we met with the doctor. She seemed
to be doing as well as one could expect given the situation. When the doctor
came in he told us that they were 98% sure they knew what Ma had, which was
Burkitt’s Lymphoma. Burkitt’s is a very rare but very fast moving disease that
usually strikes children, but can affect adults. The doctor laid out his
prognosis and treatment plan, it was then that he warned us that due to my
mother’s age that treatment was about 50/50 and that if chemo was going to go
bad that it was going to go bad very quickly, but if left untreated that she
would also die sooner rather than later. He was still quite confident that the
treatment would work, but that we should be aware of the risks and know what
are different options were. He asked the 3 of us how we wanted to proceed. We
looked at each other; Ma let out a big sigh and said, “Well, it doesn’t sound
like have that many options now do we? Sign me up for the chemo.”
The
next month was just a blur. My wife and I were taking turns driving down
throughout the week to visit her and then going down together on the weekends.
I would have loved to take time off work just to be with her, but both my wife
and I had to bring home the bacon so we could pay Ma’s bills. Not her medical
bills of course, but she didn’t have any money coming in so we had to pay for
the heat, electricity, home loan, etc. I became her power of medical so was
fielding phone calls while at work dealing with donors. My wife was working
round the clock filling out paperwork for medical assistance, disability, etc.
We were exhausted, but Ma had been doing really well with her chemo. After a
few weeks she got released to our care so she could stay at our apartment for a
few days to help save on the cost of the hospital room. It was while she was
home with us for those few days that she started to take a turn. She was tired,
couldn’t eat, had terrible sores on her mouth, and her hair started to fall
out. While she was home with us she had a follow-up doctor’s visit and one of
her blood cultures came back with a bacterial infection. She was readmitted
almost immediately as even a minor infection is deadly during chemo. That was
pretty much the beginning of the end.
I was
cleaning at Ma’s house getting it ready for her eventual return when I got a
call saying that Ma had a lung infection and was starting to have fluid buildup
around her lungs so they needed my permission to put her on a ventilator. What
else could I say but yes? My wife and I bolted down as soon as we could to see
her and by the time we got down there she seemed to be doing at least a little
better. She was off the ventilator and was breathing on her own again as the
infection seemed to be fading. After 3 years I truly don’t remember what she
said any more that pissed me off so bad, but she said something to me that I
just wasn’t in the mood for. My wife and I had been busting ass and doing the
best we could and it just wasn’t enough. I blew up at her and went out to the
visitor’s room to grab some coffee and cool off. I came back and we said our
goodbyes as everyone was just tired and drained
emotionally/physically/mentally. I don’t recall if either of us ever said sorry
or even if we said “I love you” since I inherited my bullheadedness from my
mother. If only I had known that that would be the last time that we would be
able to speak to each other…
A short
few days later I get a call saying that Ma’s infection had done some serious
damage. I will spare you the details, but they were going to have to put her back
on a ventilator and that she had taken a rather sharp turn for the worst. I was
on a 3 day out-rotation at work and just happened to be close to the hospital
so as soon as I was done at work I sprinted to the hospital. She really had
taken a terrible turn. She was on the ventilator; she had slipped into what was
essentially a coma, and was just genuinely a pitiful sight to behold. She
continued to decline to the point that her organs weren’t pumping blood like
they should so they put her on an ECMO machine which is a heart and lung
bypass, this machine was breathing and pumping her blood for her. After a few
days of the ECMO treatment, her team of doctors asked to meet with my wife and
I to discuss prognosis and options. We were told that after 2 more days on ECMO
if there wasn’t any improvement that there really would be no hope of improvement.
They told us that due to her illness that organ transplants would be out of the
question and that unless she made a miraculous recovery in those next 2 days,
that they wouldn’t be able to continue the chemo treatment.
My wife took that as essentially a
death sentence and was crushed. I had asked about a best case scenario. What
would happen if we took her off everything? They said best case scenario is
that we would have to leave her on a ventilator, that she would have minimal
brain damage from the coma, but would be dead within a month since we couldn’t
continue the chemo. After asking a few more questions I found out that their “best
case scenario” meant that my mother would be fully aware of everything that was
happening to her, but wouldn’t be able to talk or possibly communicate at all
with us; that she would fully aware that she was dying in agony. As difficult
as the decision was to make as a son that didn’t want to have his mother leave
him, it was easy as a son that didn’t want his Ma to be in any more pain than
she had to be. I had the opportunity while spending nights in the hospital with
her to have some great conversations with Ma and she had made me promise to not
let her become a vegetable. This of course was different as she was not
vegetative, but it seemed even worse.
On November 13th 2013, my
wife and I ultimately made the decision to take her off the ventilator. My
wife, uncle, aunt and myself were all at her bedside when she went and we were assured
that due to the meds that gave her that she felt little to no pain at all. I
don’t want to bum anyone out any more here, but when they show this type of
scene in the movies it isn’t even close to how it plays out in real life. In
the movies they “pull the plug” and the patient takes one last deep breath,
closes their eyes, and exhales that last time and they are gone. In real life, once
the ventilator is turned off you essentially suffocate. Your body struggles to
find air and it is painful to watch. Of course I am not happy with how it
turned out, but given what the alternative was, I would make the decision all
over again.
We had Ma cremated and we did a
celebration of life service in my hometown. I spent the whole thing drunk off
my ass and biting my tongue at family and friends that I simply didn’t have the
patience for. That being said, I did get to hear some amazing stories about Ma
that I had never heard before, so not all of it was bad I guess. Throughout
this whole ordeal I can’t stress enough how awesome my wife was. She was the
rock that Ma and I clung to. Ma was scared and I was usually transitioning
between drunk and hungover at any given point when I was off from work. She
really held the whole thing together. We also received so much love and support
from so many different people that I would have to start a whole other blog
just to cover them all. Seriously, friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, the
docs and nurses at the hospitals, and even total strangers all came out of the
woodwork to help us. We got phone calls, texts, gift cards, gas cards, cards,
emails, handwritten notes, pep talks, you name it and we got it. In the darkest
of times the generosity of so many people went a long way in bringing some
light into our world.
I seriously have enough stories
about Ma to start a “Shit My Ma Said” blog. She taught me so much and set the
bar for me personally as to what a parent should be. She gave be unconditional love
and support mixed with a swift kick to the ass when needed. She was a tough woman
that was strong her entire life that was what made the end of her life so hard
to witness. Now, since I have thoroughly bummed you all out I think I should
pull out one last story that shows the type of humor that my mother and I
shared. When we were making her funeral arrangements the assistant funeral
director (whom I have known most of my life, was in my cousin’s wedding and
serves with my other cousin on the fire department…small town) asked how we
would like her remains to be transported from Minnesota to our hometown in
Wisconsin. I didn’t know how to answer. He explained that for a reasonable fee
that one of the funeral home staff could drive to get her ashes in Minnesota
and return them to Wisconsin or they could be mailed. I couldn’t help myself
and I busted out laughing and between my guffaws and exclaimed “Mail her! Dear
god yes! Mail her!” and I think he thought that I was just grieving. He
explained some people aren’t comfortable with their loved ones going through
the mail like that. I explained to him that the thought of Ma taking one last
ride through the United States Postal Service and being delivered by our
mailman of 20+ years was just too damn funny and Ma would have found it hysterical.
The whole thing was so absurd that I just couldn’t contain myself.
I plan on doing one more Ma related
post on November 13th that I promise won’t be such a bummer. As
always, I thank you all for reading and letting me get this out in to the open.
Learn from my mistakes and make sure that you always tell the people in your
life that are important to you that you love them. Check back soon for my
glorious return to humor. Prost!
No comments:
Post a Comment