About 3 years ago my 46-year-old mother was rushed to the Hospital at about 5am in the morning. She had stopped breathing. The next morning around 11am I received a call from my sister telling me what had happened. When I arrived at the hospital my mother wasn't conscious, and looked very bad. She had tubes everywhere. That day the doctor met with us and told us it wasn't good and that things didn't look promising. We had rushed her to The Victoria General Hospital within days. They found out there that she had had a blood clot in her mechanical valve in her heart, which she could die from. To make this long story short she had open-heart surgery and while she was under she had two strokes, which caused serve brain damage and she became paralyzed on the left side. She was pretty much a vegetable at this time. She couldn’t speak, didn’t open her eyes and she didn’t seem to feel us when we touched her. After about 1 month and 1/2 of being in the Halifax hospital she returned to our hometown hospital. The doctors had told us that she would most likely not be able to talk again, walk again, or even understand us again. We were devastated! On Christmas Eve of 97' the doctors told us it was only a matter of days before my mother passed on. So we waited the longest wait of our lives.

July 1999 she was finally moved to a Nursing home where we all thought she was getting better. She had color in her face, she was doing more things for herself like whipeing her face, wiping her tears and she was moving a little more. The nurses had taken her outside which she hadn't been out since she went in the hospital, she liked it. It was somewhat strange to her but she liked it.

We all thought she was getting better cause she started to do things for herself such as whipe her tears, clean her mouth and push her hair out of her eyes. My mother was not able to do anything on her own and we never thought she would ever be able to do so. She would give us hugs, stick her tongue out and give us kisses. She was doing so good.

On September 19th 1999 she was rushed back to the hosiptal, the doctors called us up to the hospital and told us that she would not make it through the night. Once again we were devastated. Her breathing was slowing down to nothing, she was sweating, and very very cold, she was turning purple. At 9:05am September 20th 1999 she took three last breaths and she was gone.

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