{"id":185,"date":"2011-09-08T00:31:14","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T05:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/?p=185"},"modified":"2014-09-10T22:13:11","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T03:13:11","slug":"surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, back to my Mom on the 7th<\/sup> floor of St Boniface hospital in August of 2009 after an emergency due to cancer.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 She had a setback. \u00a0They 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.\u00a0 They were most likely going to have to do a colostomy.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So, she became stable again and was taken off the tube.\u00a0 The surgery date was decided but there happened to be a shortage of surgeons due to multiple emergencies and vacations etc.\u00a0 So we waited.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that long, a couple days at the most but it felt like an eternity and it really upset Mom.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 My Aunt A, who is from Warroad, Minnesota, came in from Steinbach early that Saturday morning and I got there around 5 that evening.\u00a0 Most of that Saturday was spent just trying to keep her calm.\u00a0 She had an amazing room mate who I will talk about in a later blog who helped out a lot.<\/p>\n

Finally around 8pm they came to get her and took her down to surgery.\u00a0 Auntie A and I went down with her as far as we could go and stayed with her till the last minute.\u00a0 My Uncle H (Mom\u2019s 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, \u201cSafe in the Arms of Jesus.\u201d\u00a0 So we talked about that and tried to keep the mood light.\u00a0 But then the OR nurse came and asked Mom to take off her rings.\u00a0 We had known that this would probably happen and it was heart wrenching when it did come up.\u00a0 My Mom had 2 rings on, her class ring and her wedding ring.\u00a0 She had been wearing her class ring since 1959 \u2013 50 years and her wedding ring for 36 years.\u00a0 \u00a0And she couldn\u2019t take them off, they were too tight.\u00a0 The OR attendants tried to pry them off every way they could but they just wouldn\u2019t budge.\u00a0 Finally they said they would have to cut them off and my heart stopped for a second.\u00a0 I just felt so awful for my Mom but what do you say?\u00a0 What do you do?\u00a0 She took it pretty well on the outside but I could tell her heart was breaking.\u00a0 I stood there as they snipped each of them and placed them in my hand.\u00a0 It was a surreal and incredibly sad moment.\u00a0 This is what it had come to.\u00a0 I stared at the rings for a bit trying to process what was happening.\u00a0 Not knowing what would be found, what would have to be done, whether anything could be done?\u00a0 We held hands; my Aunt A said a prayer and they led her away on the stretcher.\u00a0 Someone led my Aunt and I to the surgical waiting room and we sat.\u00a0 And we waited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puzzle-peace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}