Hi everybody.
You haven't seen a whole lot of me in here...or anywhere else for that matter...my mom (you may know her as margo45205) had been on hospice care here at home since October, passed away last Weds, Feb 7th, 4 days before her 74th birthday. Her and I had lived together for about 20 years and have been sharing the same bedroom for about the last 14 years. I , of course, became her caregiver throughout her remaining last few months. She was not only suffering from end stage congestive heart failure with all of it's complications, but also, because her brain had been receiving lesser and lesser amounts of oxygen as her diseases progressed, she developed symptoms exactly like dementia, I wasn't expecting this to happen and over the course of her last week with us, I saw her slowly, day by day, minute by minute, going from having a nice conversation at the kitchen table with us to not so much as to even recognize who each of us were. I felt like I didn't really even get a chance to say goodbye to her. I had been so busy turning her every 2 hours, giving her all of the usual medications adding in more and more of the morphine and Ativan as the need to increase the dosages became warranted, trying to deep her clean and comfy, giving her the nebulizer treatments every 4 hours, changing her bandaging on her feet, tending to her catheter, getting her something to eat and drink when she was still able to do that, and focus on what needed to be taken care of when her nurse was here on her what were bi-weekly visits that became daily visits toward the end, that I didn't realize until it was too late that I hadn't spent near as much quality time with her as I would have done otherwise. Also, even though my sister, 2 brothers and my sister in law live here a well, of which only one of them works a full time job, I did all of this all by myself! So, precious time went into doing the things that needed to be done and had to be done instead of what would have been a better balance of more quality time being included into that as well. But, honestly, at least I knew that there was nothing more that could have been done for her in order to make her final days the most comfortable for her as was humanly possible. And, after all that that woman has ever done for me, as well as seemingly EVERYONE that she has EVER encountered, it was my honor and privilege to have spent such a personal, loving and intimate moment in time with her that few daughters ever get the opportunity to spend with their mother as I did with her in the last week of our lives together.
Through the years, she had 3 or 4 heart attacks; COPD; cervical cancer; but, even more miserable to her than any other health issue she may have had were the complications that manifested in her body from being born with a hereditary disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which, by the way, I have as well, along with my sister and many, many other family members in the 5 + generations prior to our own who also had the misfortune of inheriting the gene that caused it to occur, most of whom died from the complications it would cause, usually aortic aneurysms, heart murmurs, mitral valve prolapse, blood vessels of all kinds breaking just from clapping your hands or running down the street, easy bruising is putting it mildly, skin breaks and rips so easily it would make your head spin, etc., before old age sets in....we figured that the average age was around 56 or so, my uncle was one of 4 that we know of who died of an aortic rupture and that was at the age of 38. My mom was the "record holder" for becoming the one who lived with it the longest by passing away at the age of 73, although being just 4 days shy of her 74th birthday qualifies her, at least in my book, to be 74 years old! Thank God that the only ones alive in our family who have this disorder are myself and my sister, Martha. Martha's son Steven had been born with it but he passed away a few years ago, at the age of 27, from a car accident. It had been getting passed on to 100% of the women in the family until my mothers brother inherited the gene becoming the first male to have it in our family. My 3 kids were the first set of children born in which none of them inherited the gene and with my sisters son Steven no longer living after having inherited it, this ends the chance of it ever rearing it's ugly head in the family ever again!!
Moral of the story is: you will sometimes inherit family traits that you have no control over and want no part of, and sometimes you wish that you had control over the traits of some family members that you always want to be a part of your life, but, who never seem to be there when you need them the most and then sometimes you become part of a family members life, and they become part of you in ways that become just exactly what you were looking to inherit all along and didn't even realize it, and when you finally do, it's often times too late to say thank you.
Don't wait until it's too late.......
Leslie
In loving memory of my mother Margaret L. Alexander King
February 11, 1944 to February 7, 2018
You haven't seen a whole lot of me in here...or anywhere else for that matter...my mom (you may know her as margo45205) had been on hospice care here at home since October, passed away last Weds, Feb 7th, 4 days before her 74th birthday. Her and I had lived together for about 20 years and have been sharing the same bedroom for about the last 14 years. I , of course, became her caregiver throughout her remaining last few months. She was not only suffering from end stage congestive heart failure with all of it's complications, but also, because her brain had been receiving lesser and lesser amounts of oxygen as her diseases progressed, she developed symptoms exactly like dementia, I wasn't expecting this to happen and over the course of her last week with us, I saw her slowly, day by day, minute by minute, going from having a nice conversation at the kitchen table with us to not so much as to even recognize who each of us were. I felt like I didn't really even get a chance to say goodbye to her. I had been so busy turning her every 2 hours, giving her all of the usual medications adding in more and more of the morphine and Ativan as the need to increase the dosages became warranted, trying to deep her clean and comfy, giving her the nebulizer treatments every 4 hours, changing her bandaging on her feet, tending to her catheter, getting her something to eat and drink when she was still able to do that, and focus on what needed to be taken care of when her nurse was here on her what were bi-weekly visits that became daily visits toward the end, that I didn't realize until it was too late that I hadn't spent near as much quality time with her as I would have done otherwise. Also, even though my sister, 2 brothers and my sister in law live here a well, of which only one of them works a full time job, I did all of this all by myself! So, precious time went into doing the things that needed to be done and had to be done instead of what would have been a better balance of more quality time being included into that as well. But, honestly, at least I knew that there was nothing more that could have been done for her in order to make her final days the most comfortable for her as was humanly possible. And, after all that that woman has ever done for me, as well as seemingly EVERYONE that she has EVER encountered, it was my honor and privilege to have spent such a personal, loving and intimate moment in time with her that few daughters ever get the opportunity to spend with their mother as I did with her in the last week of our lives together.
Through the years, she had 3 or 4 heart attacks; COPD; cervical cancer; but, even more miserable to her than any other health issue she may have had were the complications that manifested in her body from being born with a hereditary disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which, by the way, I have as well, along with my sister and many, many other family members in the 5 + generations prior to our own who also had the misfortune of inheriting the gene that caused it to occur, most of whom died from the complications it would cause, usually aortic aneurysms, heart murmurs, mitral valve prolapse, blood vessels of all kinds breaking just from clapping your hands or running down the street, easy bruising is putting it mildly, skin breaks and rips so easily it would make your head spin, etc., before old age sets in....we figured that the average age was around 56 or so, my uncle was one of 4 that we know of who died of an aortic rupture and that was at the age of 38. My mom was the "record holder" for becoming the one who lived with it the longest by passing away at the age of 73, although being just 4 days shy of her 74th birthday qualifies her, at least in my book, to be 74 years old! Thank God that the only ones alive in our family who have this disorder are myself and my sister, Martha. Martha's son Steven had been born with it but he passed away a few years ago, at the age of 27, from a car accident. It had been getting passed on to 100% of the women in the family until my mothers brother inherited the gene becoming the first male to have it in our family. My 3 kids were the first set of children born in which none of them inherited the gene and with my sisters son Steven no longer living after having inherited it, this ends the chance of it ever rearing it's ugly head in the family ever again!!
Moral of the story is: you will sometimes inherit family traits that you have no control over and want no part of, and sometimes you wish that you had control over the traits of some family members that you always want to be a part of your life, but, who never seem to be there when you need them the most and then sometimes you become part of a family members life, and they become part of you in ways that become just exactly what you were looking to inherit all along and didn't even realize it, and when you finally do, it's often times too late to say thank you.
Don't wait until it's too late.......
Leslie
In loving memory of my mother Margaret L. Alexander King
February 11, 1944 to February 7, 2018
