Going to see mom for the last time.

[Pyreaux]

I'm making my second trek to see my mom for the last time before she dies. Cathy Sue Craycraft's lungs are filling up with liquid, she's oxygen hungry, she can't sit up and sit still to extract it, they have to sedate her to keep her face mask on, her heart failure is getting worse. This might be it. She's a candidate for hospice care, if she goes, she'll be dead in a week. I need the prayers of everyone I know. I would love for her to get better, but Iguess what I really want is to talk to her one last time to ask her 30 questions before I never can ask her again. If she can't talk, what other things I can do? Spiritually, she hasn't been to church for decades, she been very ill and dependent. What should I do?

[MustardSeed]

I’m sorry.  That’s hard. Maybe, Tell her you love her and that when she’s ready you’re ready, even if you’re not sure she can hear you. 

[bluebell]

33 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

I'm making my second trek to see my mom for the last time before she dies. Cathy Sue Craycraft's lungs are filling up with liquid, she's oxygen hungry, she can't sit up and sit still to extract it, they have to sedate her to keep her face mask on, her heart failure is getting worse. This might be it. She's a candidate for hospice care, if she goes, she'll be dead in a week. I need the prayers of everyone I know. I would love for her to get better, but Iguess what I really want is to talk to her one last time to ask her 30 questions before I never can ask her again. If she can't talk, what other things I can do? Spiritually, she hasn't been to church for decades, she been very ill and dependent. What should I do?

That is so hard.  I'm so sorry.  I'll be praying that she'll be able to speak, and if not, that somehow you will find some peace being there with her.

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, Pyreaux said:

I'm making my second trek to see my mom for the last time before she dies. Cathy Sue Craycraft's lungs are filling up with liquid, she's oxygen hungry, she can't sit up and sit still to extract it, they have to sedate her to keep her face mask on, her heart failure is getting worse. This might be it. She's a candidate for hospice care, if she goes, she'll be dead in a week. I need the prayers of everyone I know. I would love for her to get better, but Iguess what I really want is to talk to her one last time to ask her 30 questions before I never can ask her again. If she can't talk, what other things I can do? Spiritually, she hasn't been to church for decades, she been very ill and dependent. What should I do?

Be in her space, be where she's been, maybe just hold her hand and ask her the questions even though she may not be able to answer. If she can hear you I think that alone will express the love for her because she'll know of her importance she is to you. 

[Jeanne]

Prayers for you and yours.  Moms are so special.  Hold her hands and speak from your heart.

[JVW]

On 3/26/2025 at 8:23 PM, Pyreaux said:

I'm making my second trek to see my mom for the last time before she dies. Cathy Sue Craycraft's lungs are filling up with liquid, she's oxygen hungry, she can't sit up and sit still to extract it, they have to sedate her to keep her face mask on, her heart failure is getting worse. This might be it. She's a candidate for hospice care, if she goes, she'll be dead in a week. I need the prayers of everyone I know. I would love for her to get better, but Iguess what I really want is to talk to her one last time to ask her 30 questions before I never can ask her again. If she can't talk, what other things I can do? Spiritually, she hasn't been to church for decades, she been very ill and dependent. What should I do?

My mom died this last December from stage 4 lung cancer. She was 61. My mom had to get a catheter in her lungs and was draining a liter of fluid per day for several weeks before pockets started to form and she couldn't drain anymore. She stayed in a hospice facility for about a month before she passed, and at the end we just had to have faith that she could hear any of us because she couldn't speak or open her eyes or move. She looked like a corpse for the last week of her life. It was so sad. The room felt similar to being in the room when my wife was in labor. Sacred but solemn instead of exciting. My mom dying felt like she was in labor to accomplish something so I just encouraged her and told her she was doing a good job and that all of the pain would be worth it in the end. I was asleep by her side when she went and was blessed to have a private moment with her before the coroner's came.

It sucks. There is no solution. You just have to bend over and take it and somehow believe that what is happening to your mom is the most loving thing that God can do because God is love and if healing her was more loving He would have done it. Over the course of my mom's deterioration, her denial of her condition, flying out once a month and spending thousands of dollars and time away from kids and a pregnant wife to try and live with no regrets ... I had words with God. I've screamed at Him and cried to Him. The only thing that changed as a result of my raw prayers was my heart. Which is, perhaps, an even bigger miracle than if God did heal my mother and give her another 20 years of life.

I'm sorry that you and your mother have to go through this. I'm sorry that we are all born with a mortal condition. I hope that you will take the pain and turn to Christ for healing instead of to the internet or to addiction or whatever else people do to numb out. I believe that, because death is God's purview, that He is intimately close with all of those involved. Your mother is probably feeling a lot of peace and love from God as she struggles at the end. And although I'm the only one who believes in God amongst my five siblings, I've seen Him help each of them deal with this pain.

As far as advice on what to do. Say whatever you want and do whatever you want. Live with no regrets. I've had some loved ones die who I didn't put effort into and I still have regrets years later thinking that I should have said or done something different. It sucks to feel that way. Whatever is past is past, but with your last visit, be honest and focused on getting out whatever your heart feels. The result of speaking the truth is always good.

[Raingirl]

On 3/26/2025 at 5:23 PM, Pyreaux said:

I'm making my second trek to see my mom for the last time before she dies. Cathy Sue Craycraft's lungs are filling up with liquid, she's oxygen hungry, she can't sit up and sit still to extract it, they have to sedate her to keep her face mask on, her heart failure is getting worse. This might be it. She's a candidate for hospice care, if she goes, she'll be dead in a week. I need the prayers of everyone I know. I would love for her to get better, but Iguess what I really want is to talk to her one last time to ask her 30 questions before I never can ask her again. If she can't talk, what other things I can do? Spiritually, she hasn't been to church for decades, she been very ill and dependent. What should I do?

My mom died in 2016, and it was the hardest loss.  Talk to her, even if she can’t respond. We kept talking to Mom until the end. Sending hugs. 

[Tony uk]

I lost my mother 7 years ago, after a long illness. She was sent home from the hospital at the end of life. Surrounded by those who loved her, and she loved equally. It is not an easy time, watching some close, like this. Just be there for your mother, and tell her how much you love her.

 You are in my prayers at this difficult, and very sad time 

[Rain]

Just thinking of you and hoping you found what you could do and that you have peace.

[rodheadlee]

On 3/26/2025 at 5:23 PM, Pyreaux said:

I'm making my second trek to see my mom for the last time before she dies. Cathy Sue Craycraft's lungs are filling up with liquid, she's oxygen hungry, she can't sit up and sit still to extract it, they have to sedate her to keep her face mask on, her heart failure is getting worse. This might be it. She's a candidate for hospice care, if she goes, she'll be dead in a week. I need the prayers of everyone I know. I would love for her to get better, but Iguess what I really want is to talk to her one last time to ask her 30 questions before I never can ask her again. If she can't talk, what other things I can do? Spiritually, she hasn't been to church for decades, she been very ill and dependent. What should I do?

I'm sorry you're going to lose your Mom. I lost mine 4 years ago, April 27th. It was a similar ending. But Mom was very active until she got her 2nd covid shot. Then she was gone in a week. I was amazed they let us all in, in pairs to say goodbye due to  covid. I'll send my prayers, you'll see her again. Be happy her struggles are over.

Much love,

Rod.

 

[Pyreaux]

Well, she was off the cipap machine and was lucid! Everything I wanted, I got all my questions answered. Praise God! But something went wrong. We all caught Covid. We gave mom covid. She was breathing okay, but now she is getting pneumonia. So, we put a halt on Hospice talks. We discovered disturbing hospital practices have continued. My mom I was told a decade ago was the longest living person with chronic pancreatitis, and the only treatment is pain management, a rather notorious "medication" that is extremely addictive. She's been on it for longer than any one and still be living. She could take enough to kill a rhino. My sister whined her off, once she was a bit bedridden, but then could go bowling, remains an addict. She "doctor shops", complains of pain, sends herself to the hospital to get "medicine", they always give it to her behind our backs. We are pretty certain the very long time on "medication" is actually detrimental to her health. The cycle is she gets the "medication", she declines in breathing, we say she's an addict, take her off, they obey, she recovers. This cycle is established.

They are ignoring the chart, ignore her daughter (the Power of Attorney). I went down there twice when they gave her that "medication". When we caught them, the doctor gave every excuse, "I'm the doctor! I didn't know I needed your permission! Was I supposed to call any hour?!" They ignore the history and the chart and the Power of Attorney, and push that medication, against what I understand was their legal obligation not to administer narcotics without permission. If I didn't know better, they might be trying to kill her... So, now with covid, we are now really curious if she's off the "medication", if she can survive Covid, and if she does, we'll consider changing hospitals, see if they obey, and if she lives. If she dies, we were prepared, maybe a bit guilty that we might have killed her, but we'll also be wondering if they killed her.

Prayers. Blessing to heal Cathy's covid and pneumonia, and heart failure. Cursing to opioids and doctors who misuse them.

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

If I didn't know better, they might be trying to kill her

They just may have seen patients in extreme pain and assume she is being honest about it.  Sorry to hear about the addiction issues.  I am surprised they are so easily giving it to her as that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.  I have to get a new prescription each month, the government tracks it here and it’s impossible to get it even a day early.  The pain doctors require pills to be counted each month, etc.  And I hear Utah is on the more lenient side.  

Edited April 10, 2025 by Calm

[Pyreaux]

13 hours ago, Calm said:

They just may have seen patients in extreme pain and assume she is being honest about it.  Sorry to hear about the addiction issues.  I am surprised they are so easily giving it to her as that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.  I have to get a new prescription each month, the government tracks it here and it’s impossible to get it even a day early.  The pain doctors require pills to be counted each month, etc.  And I hear Utah is on the more lenient side.  

They had motive. The state is paying for all her bills, she is chronically ill, the hospital is full, she's annoying to staff calling every 10 mins about everything including pain, but no other signs of pain, the doctor didn't read the chart or disregarded it, call us recommending hospice care while secretly giving her what will kill her, a substance that restricts the breathing of someone who was having trouble with getting oxygen. They changed her intern doctor the instant they were caught. Have head nurses call with nothing to say other than, "we're really sorry". We are 80% sure what they did was illegal.

Edited April 10, 2025 by Pyreaux

[Tony uk]

I can appreciate where you are coming from. There were issues i found with my mother's hospital treatment, in the months before she died. The only comfort, was my mother coming home for her remaining time.

[Pyreaux]

Oh, my sister said said Cathy "coded" twice recently, but they brought her back. I don't know if she'll pull-through the night. They called her today to ask her how long they should defibrillate her to bring her back... Is that odd? More prayers.

[bluebell]

16 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

Oh, my sister said said Cathy "coded" twice recently, but they brought her back. I don't know if she'll pull-through the night. They called her today to ask her how long they should defibrillate her to bring her back... Is that odd? More prayers.

In the instances that I know of where death is inevitable because of advanced age or some kind of disease, most places will ask the family or the person if they want to put a do not resuscitate order in place, since those kinds of things are often painful and intrusive.  In end of life cases they aren't going to change the ultimate outcome, but they can provide more time.   

If that was similar to what they were asking, that doesn't sound very odd to me personally.

Prayers.  💕

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

Oh, my sister said said Cathy "coded" twice recently, but they brought her back. I don't know if she'll pull-through the night. They called her today to ask her how long they should defibrillate her to bring her back... Is that odd? More prayers.

I just happened to see a FB post by a doctor that mention the issue of needing to continue resuscitation on patients who they believe/know aren’t going to make it when DNRs or other instructions aren’t available and his position was ER doctors often see it as unnecessary suffering as the defibrillation shocks are quite painful, so I don’t see it as unusual, but rather considerate.

Edited April 17, 2025 by Calm

[Pyreaux]

Well, my mom survived Covid and resuscitation. She still lives, was on the General Floor, but returned to ICU. We caught that she was switched to Do Not Resuscitate and was again secretly assigned narcotics, we stopped that. My eldest sister and POA, is busy and has plans to put her in hospice because she's not bouncing back like before.

I hate to have to keep asking for more blessings. I guess what I need is for the "correct" discission to be made, because it's so permanent. Should we let her die or does God plan to heal her more enough to leave the hospital, as only that will change my sister mind.

Dear God, Bless Cathy Sue Craycraft, that she either recovers enough now or never. Don't leave me to decide life and death here, and if I must, choose the right.

[Pyreaux]

She's gone. On her second bout of pneumonia, her kidneys were shutting down, they did some Lasik surgery with no improvement, they couldn't put her on dialysis with the pneumonia. They put her in hospice today, fed her a cocktail of drugs, she died in five hours. I've felt so sorrowful and worry-sick for weeks. I've cried in prayer. But now that she's gone, I find it really odd I don't feel much of anything. I guess I had weeks to mourn. Certainly, all urgency and uncertainty are now gone. But I thought I should feel something, maybe I'm too introverted or it hasn't hit me yet. Maybe God took my sorrow away... It wouldn't be the first time, but last time it was clear as it was in the middle of a prayer.

She was a tough one, she wouldn't die, even when the doctors said she would many times over the decades. It took most of her major organs shutting down, and they basically had to let her go and give her whatever drugs they could. I've come to believe, as she did, that the only reason she made it this far was through the prayers of many. So, I want to thank you all for being a part of that. I've felt your prayers. 

Edited May 15, 2025 by Pyreaux

[bluebell]

8 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

She's gone. On her second bout of pneumonia, her kidneys were shutting down, they did some Lasik surgery with no improvement, they couldn't put her on dialysis with the pneumonia. They put her in hospice today, fed her a cocktail of drugs, she died in five hours. I've felt so sorrowful and worry-sick for weeks. I've cried in prayer. But now that she's gone, I find it really odd I don't feel much of anything. I guess I had weeks to mourn. Certainly, all urgency and uncertainty are now gone. But I thought I should feel something, maybe I'm too introverted or it hasn't hit me yet. Maybe God took my sorrow away... It wouldn't be the first time, but last time it was clear as it was in the middle of a prayer.

She was a tough one, she wouldn't die, even when the doctors said she would many times over the decades. It took most of her major organs shutting down, and they basically had to let her go and give her whatever drugs they could. I've come to believe, as she did, that the only reason she made it this far was through the prayers of many. So, I want to thank you all for being a part of that. I've felt your prayers. 

I hope you can have comfort and peace through all the many different emotions that I'm sure are to come.  Losing a mom is such a big loss.  I'm so glad that you were able to feel supported and also get to spend more time with her.

[Calm]

I hope you find the balance you need.

Quote

But now that she's gone, I find it really odd I don't feel much of anything. I guess I had weeks to mourn. Certainly, all urgency and uncertainty are now gone. But I thought I should feel something, maybe I'm too introverted or it hasn't hit me yet. Maybe God took my sorrow away... It wouldn't be the first time, but last time it was clear as it was in the middle of a prayer.

I share the below just in case you feel uncomfortable about your current lack of grief…and btw it may come soon or quite a bit later when it’s unexpected from what I hear.

Stop reading this if it’s the least bit inappropriate.  I am sharing this solely to help you in case you are experiencing what I used to feel, a sense there was something missing or wrong with me, but if it’s not helpful, just ignore it.  I don’t want to make things worse for you or waste your time.

I am basically telling you not to worry about it.  You grieving or not is not a measure of how much you loved your mother.  I know this from my own experience.  You will grieve if you need to and if you don’t, in my view hopefully you won’t.

I didn’t grieve with either of my parents’ death.  In both cases I saw it as such a release for them.  Dad was in good shape but it wasn’t going to last much longer.  He got to go with only a day of sickness, which he hated in himself.  Covid had been going for months with no end in sight when Mom died, so at best we could come to her window and wave.  No family had touched her in five months when she died even though she was getting decent care.  That is the only thing that upset me.  Myself, a dear mutual friend, and a niece of mine dressed her after death because of this.

I have always wondered if there is something different about me because I never grieved for my grandparents or other relatives or friends’ deaths either even though I loved them all.  None died in accidents though, there was always a significantly negative health future to come.  Still I see others grieving in the same situation, sometimes for years.

I have known grief, unbearable grief at times, but it’s been for those living in tragic situations they can’t change.

I actually look on the lack of grief at death as a blessing.  There is nothing I can do about death once it happens.  Knowing myself grief would be hard to process and wouldn’t achieve much for me, but make my day to day harder.  So though I feel odd about it, I see it as a good thing.  If by chance the grief doesn’t come, don’t think less of yourself because of it.  If you see grief as an expression of love, remember there is an eternity of expressing love to your mother to come in the future.  Even now, grief isn’t necessary to tell her you love her.

Edited to remove details that were really irrelevant.

Edited May 15, 2025 by Calm

[MustardSeed]

I’m sorry you’re going through this now. 

[Kenngo1969]

Sincere condolences on your loss, @Pyreaux.  Others' mileage varies, I'm sure, and that's perfectly fine.  I'm not sure how much (or what) anyone will get out of this, and that's fine, too.  I also realize that losing a mom is very different, but I haven't really felt much grief since my dad died.  I think he wrung everything he possibly could out of life before leaving it, and I know there were people waiting for him on the other side (one, in particular, his mother and my grandmother, who's been on the other side for almost as long as I've been alive: Family lore holds that she held on long enough to see me here before passing on.  There might be something to that.  I was quite premature.  Perhaps my [apparent] haste to get here and her [apparent, seeming] determination to stay long enough to see me get here are two sides of the same coin.)

One "argument" I've been having with my mom: On my Dad's last day, he roused himself enough to take my hand in his, and kissed it.  My mom says she thinks that gesture was meant for me.  I think that he thought I was my mom.  Granted, it's an odd "burning question" to have, but, nevertheless, I'm rather torqued that I'm going to have to wait so long to ask it!   (Should I pray for a vision?! )  RIP, Dad.  As much as it might be one of those trifling, insignificant things that don't really matter, I do look forward to being able to ask that question!  See you soon ... but not too soon!    Again, sincere condolences on your loss, Pyreaux.

One thing that occurs to me, for what it's worth: Sometimes, we lose people before we actually lose them.  I think, to a certain extent, that's what happened with my Dad.  He was still "here," but he wasn't the same guy.  The last time he went into the hospital, almost a year ago (not counting the transfer from home hospice to a hospice facility, which occurred just a few hours before he passed on), the last doctor to give him any kind of a prognosis estimated he would be gone in weeks, and yet it was almost a year.  Perhaps we grieve, and progress through whatever "stages" there might be in grieving (perhaps we process the [pending] loss) without realizing, explicitly, that that's what we're doing.  I think that's probably what happened to me.  For what it's worth.

Edited May 16, 2025 by Kenngo1969

[Rain]

I hope you find peace as you go through this. 

 

[Tacenda]

God bless @Pyreaux. I gather easily you were such a wonderful son. When my mom passed she had late stage Alzheimer's so I really lost my mother years before. My dad passed 2 months earlier of a heart attack, so in my mind she hopefully went to him and they are happily fishing out of a river/lake somewhere or being my guardian angels. I didn't grieve with my mom as much a I did with my dad. It was so unexpected and it hit so hard. I had barely made it to the hospital when he passed minutes before. I had no idea he was suffering as I was sub teaching and had turned off my phone and hadn't heard my dad when he called to see if I could go see Mom and help her with lunch, his daily routine in the care center because he was feeling ill. My dad later called my husband to take him to the hospital when he should have called 911. And when arriving to the hospital, it was too late and he passed with my husband there. I had finally turned my phone on and then got the call from my husband that he was taking my dad to the hospital and I rushed from the school to get there and screamed so loud when they told me he was gone and then had to be put in a room, but know I was still loud with my cries. It was devastating. 

But enough of me, I can just tell your mother was so loved and loved to live, since she out lived her supposed time.