Visiting Mom During her "Last Days"
Well, it has been way too long since I’ve updated my
blog. It’s been a whirlwind with all the
festivities going on. Since the last
trip, my daughter and I just returned to Swaziland from a 3-week Rest and Recuperation
travel to Florida. I just recently spent
three days in Washington DC to see mom and try to do some business at State
Department. Well, not even three weeks,
I hear news that mom is in the hospital.
But this is not just the usual hospitalization that she’s been admitted
due to low-oxygen/shortness of breath. My brother and dad
are terrible at communication. It wasn’t
until three days later that I realized she had a serious cardiac arrest
resulting in a coma/brain injury – when I called the hospital from Swaziland,
the doctor in ICU told me that it was severe, and recovery is low. Mom had sustained a anoxic brain injury and
will not recover – and even if she did, she would not be what she was like 2 weeks
ago. This was terrible news. I was confused, hurt and angry. The next day I went to work and told my
boss.. He said, “I’m so sorry Bo to hear that.
Go home, go see your mom.” Coming
from Bill, I was surprised. I didn’t
even know that State Department paid for emergency visitation travel – so much
for my knowledge about rights and policies.
I dragged my six year old daughter and packed bags at last minute,
and we were on our way again across the ocean.
This time because it was a government paid trip – there was a direct
flight to Washington Dulles with a stop in Dakar for gas. My daughter has had ENOUGH. She was whiny, disrespectful and just in
general misbehaving the whole trip. Who
could blame a girl who has to go through all this travel stress AGAIN in less than 3
weeks. The first trip was not so
great with two connections but she did great then. We finally made our way and saw mom – she
looked horrible. Her whole lower mouth
sagged and her tongue stuck out of the mouth.
The nurse said it’s because her whole face is relaxed. Well when the higher-brain no longer functions
those muscles don’t work. As the day
progresses, the tongue reduced. After a
week passes, a committee met with us and sort of made us head in the direction
of hospice care. My brother and I agreed..we
were in for a surprise as we were not fully informed about what hospice care
was about.
The first day in hospice, mom’s tongue bled profusely. We had no idea what was going on. We thought maybe it was the trach cut in her throat maybe
it was the lungs..something. All we knew
was that it looked to be a horrific way to go and all the hospice nurse can do
is to drug her more with morphine. They
said in hospice care ALL meds were stopped, except for feeding tubes. As I was oblivious to what was going around
me, the trauma doctors and nurses in ICU saw what was happening and had to intervened
when they saw how distraught my brother and I were, emotionally. I was praying to St. Faustina for
intercession and miraculously that was what happened. In order to find out what was causing her an
apparent “bleeding to death” was actually her teeth bighting on her tongue,
causing a thick ball of blood in her mouth. Now the
doctors had it under control, she remained in acute care. They said after a follow-up meeting we can
still move her back to hospice and letting her die naturally from kidney
failure (no more dialysis) which was actually least painful.
My brother and I were still not in acceptance and hoped and hoped that
she would wake up. Well, one month later
after acute care and mom looking SO much better, denied nursing homes from two
that almost took her, we again gave up.
I thought I gave her a chance, but it’s time we let mom go.
'Going to Baghdad is going to be a good experience for me – not only will I have a chance to take care of myself, I’ll be able to have time for myself to study hopefully do some soul searching while serving America. The boss I’m going to work for sounds like he’s in sync with my work values. I think it will all work out. I will keep you posted. And without the little girl, I should have more time to blog among many other things I hoped to have time for (spiritual development, exercise). I’ll miss her immensely but she is strong and so am I. So here to another 16,000 miles (for my return trip to Swaziland and back again for training in the USA).
