Our Devastating Losses

There was no one more happier to see Mom than Joey, he called her MeNana. Every night just as she was going to bed we would burst in her room and yell surprise. Then I would let Joey climb all over her. She loved it and so did he. After her first round of chemo the doctor didn't see much change so he gave her 6 weeks and wanted to give her morphine to send her home to die. Well we fired him. We took her to Karmanos  Cancer Institute in Detroit, the specialist there told us the previous doctor was not aggressive enough. He tried her on another medication and set up a protocol for her new doctor, whom turned out to be fantastic.

Around the same time my Mother-in-law was having medical issues too. Most of the time they were in the hospital at the same time so we would just hop between floors. When Mom was home and doing out patient chemo all of the family pitched in to take her. Everyone took turns taking her where she needed to be. Then a home nurse would come in and give her shots or I.V. fluids, clean her port, take her temp stuff like that. But they started to get too comfy. One day a nurse came out hooked Mom to an I.V. then went into my bathroom to crap and read a book she was in there for an hour. So being me I fired them. I took over the home care, I did the shots, I.V's, temps and Mom liked it better. This went on for almost a year.

The first part of August while my Mother-in-law was having dialysis she had a stroke. She didn't want any heroics, so she was taken to a room and made very comfortable. On August 6th five days before my husbands birthday our sweet Charlene passed away. We were all devastated I left her room and went to see my Mom a floor down from hers. I crawled in the bed with my her and  we cried together. I told her, "You had better not die on me". That evening we talked to her doctor, he told me he heard about Charlene and unfortunately he felt my Mom would also pass this week. I told him she wouldn't do that to me, die that close to Charlene. She waited a week.

On August 14th five day before my birthday Mom passed here at home with her family. I lost my 2 Moms. Here I was a 44 year old woman with 11 kids and I felt like an orphan. I now know this is how many of the children in foster care feel. If it hadn't been for my husband and kids I would have curled up in a ball and died myself. The next morning my sisters and brother were here and we had to make funeral arrangement. All of a sudden I started to laugh, in our grief we had sent Mom to the wrong funeral home. She hated the owner of the one we sent her to. So we made our oldest  sister Lori  make the call. Mom would have thought this was funny, maybe she had something to do with it and as always Mom had the last laugh.