On June 9^th, 2021, I went to my mom’s house so we could leave early the next day for an outpatient surgery in the city.  

I often replay that entire morning of June 10th – how well she looked after breaking her back the year prior.  How she was nervous the morning of the procedure and she often isn’t nervous.  How I had a horrible cold and we almost rescheduled.  The procedure she went in for wasn’t necessarily standard but she was supposed to go home that day.  

After the procedure, she was doing well in the recovery room because she was still drugged up.  We talked about eating a greasy cheeseburger on the way home.  Unfortunately there were other plans that started off with 1 night of observation and turned into a nightmare of 42 days at the hospital.

I’ve started to write and rewritten this post so many times and it is painful to recall.  At a high level, my mom had a large polyp removed from her duodenum area and experienced 2 very serious complications from the procedure:  pancreatitis and internal bleeding.  And then her pancreatitis caused complications and additional bleeding.  Being in the hospital for so long caused complications.  In 42 days she experienced: 2 trips to ICU, 3 major internal bleeding episodes, hospital delirium, fluid overload, multiple blood transfusions, 4 instances which required the STAT team, 7 different procedures with anesthesia, a picc put in, at one point 4 IVs of meds, and major blood clots.  

I witnessed 2 of her bleeding episodes. The first time she lost consciousness after leaving the bathroom that looked like a murder scene. I was standing behind her helping her from the bathroom and she collapsed in my arms while I screamed for help. The second time was in in ICU where I saw my mom laying in a pool of her own blood in the hospital bed.  If you’re wondering how you get past seeing your mom in those situations, you don’t. You just try not to think about it.

My brother doesn’t live in the area but was able to spend about 10 nights with her in the hospital. This helped her get past hospital delirium, which is basically when someone looses sense of reality in the hospital. My mom was hallucinating and very aggressive. The first night she had delirium, she pulled out her IVs 5 times and was calling the nurses names. This was terrifying for everyone to witness, and having my brother and I there around the clock grounded her. This was something very common with patients in the height of Covid times.

Looking back, because they kept her that night for observation, it saved her life. She didn’t leave the hospital the same way she went in, physically and mentally. When we left the hospital, she was extremely weak, had a feeding tube, 2 drains, and I moved in with her for 6 weeks.  And that is when the hard part began.