So, back to my Mom on the 7th floor of St Boniface hospital in August of 2009 after an emergency due to cancer.
Mom seemed to be improving but a few days after I got home from vacation I got to the hospital and found that they had put the tube back down into her stomach. She had a setback. They did more tests and decided that surgery would have to happen but they would have to wait for her to be off the stomach tube and stable again. They were most likely going to have to do a colostomy. Mom was very matter of fact and just said if that was what they had to do she would figure out how to deal with it. So, she became stable again and was taken off the tube. The surgery date was decided but there happened to be a shortage of surgeons due to multiple emergencies and vacations etc. So we waited. It wasn’t that long, a couple days at the most but it felt like an eternity and it really upset Mom. They would get her ready and say that they would be there in half an hour but then another emergency would come up and she would get bumped again. My Aunt A, who is from Warroad, Minnesota, came in from Steinbach early that Saturday morning and I got there around 5 that evening. Most of that Saturday was spent just trying to keep her calm. She had an amazing room mate who I will talk about in a later blog who helped out a lot.
Finally around 8pm they came to get her and took her down to surgery. Auntie A and I went down with her as far as we could go and stayed with her till the last minute. My Uncle H (Mom’s brother) had told me on the phone that morning to pass on a message to my Mom that he was thinking of the old hymn, “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.” So we talked about that and tried to keep the mood light. But then the OR nurse came and asked Mom to take off her rings. We had known that this would probably happen and it was heart wrenching when it did come up. My Mom had 2 rings on, her class ring and her wedding ring. She had been wearing her class ring since 1959 – 50 years and her wedding ring for 36 years. And she couldn’t take them off, they were too tight. The OR attendants tried to pry them off every way they could but they just wouldn’t budge. Finally they said they would have to cut them off and my heart stopped for a second. I just felt so awful for my Mom but what do you say? What do you do? She took it pretty well on the outside but I could tell her heart was breaking. I stood there as they snipped each of them and placed them in my hand. It was a surreal and incredibly sad moment. This is what it had come to. I stared at the rings for a bit trying to process what was happening. Not knowing what would be found, what would have to be done, whether anything could be done? We held hands; my Aunt A said a prayer and they led her away on the stretcher. Someone led my Aunt and I to the surgical waiting room and we sat. And we waited.