Mama
10/14/23 - 09/13/04
Mary Ellen Vincent Lavergne, age 19
Mary Ellen Vincent Istre, age 80 yrs 10 mths
WHAT HAPPENED
Back in late July 2004, my mother had a routine exam of her left hip to find out what was causing pain there to the point where she could not walk. By accident, they found she had a large mass in her right kidney. She immediately saw a urologist who diagnosed her to have renal cell carcinoma. From there, we waited for the results of staging tests to see what was what. There was no spread of this tumor, and we rejoiced in that fact; however, this now meant, surgery....a surgery I knew to be very hard on everyone who has had a kidney removed. Being my mom was nearly 81, I worried even more.
It was scheduled for August 11, but, because of insurance problems, it was canceled and reschedued for August 24. Needless to say, we were all nervous and scared, and we all cried.
The hours went by fast, but the worry was there. Mom was in surgery four hours total. The nurses did call and say she was doing good about two hours into it, though. When the surgeon came out, he scared us all by the look on his face, but he said she did really great except for a little trouble with bleeding where she has extra arteries and veins attached to the kidney than normal, but she was stable the entire time.
Mom was in recovery for two and a half hours because "she couldn't wake up." When they finally wheeled her out, it was a huge relief, but mama was definitely in "lala" land. I talked to her and she tried to focus on me but couldn't. We all went to her room with her, but she was mainly out of it for the next two days solid only waking up occasionally to talk out of her head or sometimes recognize one of us. She actually looked like she had a stroke at one point with weakness on her left side and contractions of her arms with involuntary movement of her arms. When I asked the surgeon what he thought, he said he had no idea. They had long stopped the pain medication in the epidural, but she was still not waking up. After doing some tests, he found she had some abnormal chemistry readings and was anemic. So, they corrected those levels and gave her a unit of blood. She still had some memory deficit and could not move her left leg at all, so they did a CAT scan to see if there was a problem in her brain. There was none.
By that Friday morning, she "woke up" but did not remember the two days before at all. By Sunday, the surgeon told her she was ready to go home from a surgical standpoint but not physically. Amazing as it is, my mama swore she never "suffered" in pain. So, he consulted the rehab unit....now I know that was a huge mistake, but......
She started physical therapy and occupational therapy while still on the surgical floor, and on September 2, she was transferred around the corner to the rehab floor. She went to therapy twice a day, and when I saw her walk alone the first time on the 4th, I was just so thrilled for her. It was working, and she was gaining her strength back. MOF, that day, I told her she looked better than I had seen her look in a LONG time :-)
We had a team therapy meeting on the 7th, and when I got there, I couldn't help but notice just how beautiful mama looked. She was beyond radiant, and I told her so. She laughed, slapping her right side, and saying she had gotten rid of that monster! She just wanted to go home, but the meeting disclosed she just wasn't ready for that yet. Mama was quite disheartened, but....she was in good spirits when she went off to therapy and was smiling....maybe next week, she said.
She called me that evening and again the next morning, and that morning was the first time we had actually been "alone" to talk, and we had a nice and long talk, but it broke my heart when she said "she was lonesome for me." I then told her why I had stopped going up there every day and went back to work in the mornings and only saw her on my days off. She was upset, but she understood.
The next day, I get a call from my aunt telling me that mom had fallen in the bathroom, and my heart sank. I was also furious, as I knew this was just not good. I immediately called my brother, whose heart also sank. Then, I called mama, but she was very evasive with me. She "couldn't talk openly". She told me she slipped cause they had waxed the floor and that she landed on a hip, but she couldn't tell me which one, and when I asked her why she didn't have the nurses to help her, she said "Cause I could."
I talked to her the next afternoon, as well, and she did talk to me more openly, but it still didn't resolve the whole situation. She told me which hip she had landed on--the left one. I fussed at her a tiny bit by telling her she knew she was supposed to have nurses help her, and she laughed and said she had already been fussed at enough and didn't need me fussing, either. I told her I wasn't really fussing, but she knew. She agreed. They did an xray the day previous, but it was "inconclusive." Her husband had called me just before we talked and told me that there was no orthopedic surgeon available to do a bone scan right then and there, cause there wasn't one over the weekend. I knew that was suspicious. There is always one on call for emergencies, and if an 80-year-old woman fresh out of kidney surgery falling hard on her hip wasn't an emergency, I don't know what is. Then he tells me that they had to put my mom back on oxygen cause her oxygen saturation had dropped. All I could say was "why?" After talking to mom, she seemed okay, though.
We went to visit the next day, and I was really appalled at how my mom looked....very ashen gray again and definitely not the same person I had seen a few days before. I asked if a chest xray had been done to see why her O2 sat had dropped, and I was told (by her husband), "You don't need a reason." I argued there most definitely was a reason, like before when mom had fluid in her left lung. No response was made to that.
When we called mama on Sunday, "she was in the bathroom," so we didn't get to talk to her.
On Monday morning, at 6:05 a.m., the phone rang with mom's husband on the other end trying to tell me that there was something wrong, mom had some kind of spell, and that they were talking about sending her to ICU. I screamed bloody murder and said I was on my way. Everyone came running and then also started screaming. I had my daughter call my brother and then a nurse called me and said words that still burn inside of me......"Charlene, calm down, you're mama is going to be just fine. She was talking and very alert just before she went into a coma. They got her pulse back now, and she's going to be okay." I screamed, "COMA? PULSE BACK? SHE DIED?" I wasn't stupid and knew this woman was trying to blow smoke up my.....well, you know. (I want to know WHY she made that phone call.)
I was at the hospital within 20 minutes, and they were coding my mama. A nurse and I talked, and she told me that mama had a cold sweat and then went out. I told her it sounded like she threw a blood clot....a pulmonary embolism. When I talked about how mama went downhill after that fall, a nurse also told me they had no idea mama had fallen till the next day. (This sent red flags up immediately. Who took her to the bathroom, who picked her up off the floor, and who brought her back to bed? Let's not mention, WHY the nurses were not called immediately after my mama hit hard on a concrete floor! I know in my heart who and why!)
Her doctor's partner came walking down the hall and stopped to talk to me, then joined the code staff in her room, and I stood inches outside the door. I could hear the heart monitor, and I knew she was gone.....two beats and a long pause, and that would repeat. Still, when the internist came out and looked me in the eyes, I was not prepared to hear "She didn't make it." I remember screaming for him not to tell me that. When I could calm down enough, I asked him what he thought, and he and the ER doctor felt it was a pulmonary embolism. My poor sweet mama was dead, and I could not bear the pain.
All I kept thinking was, "that fall killed her." (When I looked up pulmonary embolism, one of the risk factors in getting one is "hip fracture." As far as I know now, we still don't know if she did break her hip--they supposedly did a bone scan on Sunday of which we never got the results--but, even if it wasn't broken, the force from the fall was enough to cause it. We will never have all the answers, and nothing will bring mama back, but "I NEED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED." I was later told that mama was found in a cold sweat, soaking wet, and the nurses got her up to shower and change her bed, and when they put her back to bed, she looked to the left at her husband and died. This brings up the question of "WHY A CODE BLUE WAS NOT CALLED IMMEDIATELY WHEN THEY SAW SHE WAS OBVIOUSLY IN DISTRESS." It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out a cold sweat meant something. Something is definitely not right with this whole thing, and we need to know.......if only to be able to move forward in the grief process.)
I forced myself in the room, and it was beyond awful. I touched mama's face....warm as can be, and I begged her to wake up :-( I could not believe this was my mama....lifeless :-( I told her to go and be with my dad now.....I let her go in peace--against every will I had.
The next worst thing I had to do was look in my daughters' eyes as they came up, and both of them hit the floor. Next, was my aunt, and I had to look in her eyes as she came down the hall. I didn't have to say anything....she knew. I remember our eyes meeting, and she said "No, don't tell me." My brother arrived next, but he already knew....he had gone up to ICU, and finally someone there told him, "The family is on the rehab floor." He told his daughter something was wrong, and as he was passing the nurse's station to come towards us, he heard "autopsy." He knew then :-(
I met mom's husband and my uncle, aunt, and cousins at the funeral home later on to make arrangements, and that was hard to do and something I never did before :-( We wrote the obiturary, set a time, picked out her "eternal bed" (much better than the traditional terms), which is the exact one she had mentioned to me she wanted (Going Home...with doves), then we went to a store to pick out her dress.
It was hard going to sleep that night. My brother and I talked for hours, and I finally forced myself to bed at 1 only to wake up screaming at 4 after a nightmare, which I know now was not just a dream....I saw my mama getting up out of that "eternal bed" and come towards me "like Frankenstein" with two white things on either side of her, all the while calling "HELP ME" over and over again. I was freaked out over that and did not go back to sleep. When I saw this dream again in my head later on, I realized those two white things were "angels" who had come to take her to Heaven, and mama was begging me to help her, as she didn't want to go :-( That just upset me even more :-(
