I had dropped my four year old son off at my parents' house for a sleepover. After strapping my seven month old daughter in her car seat and before getting into the car my mother stood on her front porch and said, "I love you, Dawn." I looked at her with a smile and told her I loved her also. That was the last time I saw my mother as her normal self.
The next evening my father called to tell me that he thought my mom was having a stroke and I had to pick up my son, who was going to spend another night with them. With my husband and daughter, we rushed to their house. By the time we got there the ambulance had already picked up my mother and my dad followed. Thankfully, my aunt was living nearby at the time and was able to sit with my son until we picked him up. For the rest of the night I heard nothing, couldn't get a hold of my father, and went to bed fearing the worst. Early the next morning my father woke me up with a phone call saying that she did indeed have a stroke and was being airlifted to a hospital near Philadelphia where they were going to do an emergency surgery that only had a 30% chance of survival. As he spoke those words I could feel my emotions fall apart. I saw her just a few days before and she seemed perfectly fine. How did this happen?
My aunt and I rushed to the hospital where we met up with my brother and sisters. They all live on Long Island so their trip was long but they came with no hesitation. In my head I kept envisioning entering the hospital and seeing my father who would give me news that she didn't make it. I prepared for it, although no one could ever completely prepare for something such as that. We walked into the hospital, found out what floor and what room she was in, made our way into the elevator and onto the right floor and walked out of the elevator. As we stepped off the elevator my father met us in the hallway. The panicked look on his face scared me and I was expecting he would tell us it was too late. Thankfully, she was still alive and out of surgery. He took us to her room and she laid on the hospital bed completely lifeless. Unable to open her eyes or make any movement I wasn't sure what the future would be like for her. That was truly the hardest day of my life.
It took months for my mother to recover, but not fully. She had to learn how to talk again, how to walk again and how to eat again. She went from a rehabilitation hospital to a nursing home but my father removed her from the home after seeing how they were running things there. As someone who used to work in a nursing home I can tell you first hand how those nurses get away with things and those patients are not well cared for. I was glad that my father decided to take her home but it was hard to see how much he had to go through when caring for her. This was not the retirement he planned on having.
It's been five years since her stroke and it's amazing to see how far she has come. In the last year or so she had been having some difficulties with speech and memory loss. She also has several episodes during the night where she had hallucinations and thinks something she dreamed was true. After testing from the neurologist she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.
My precious, sweet mother has Alzheimer's. I can't wrap my head around this and have yet to process it. After all she's been through why did she have to have one of the cruelest diseases out there? A disease that will take away her memory and will eventually take away her life. There is no cure for this and no survivors.
When I was a little girl and things were rough my mom told me, "don't worry, Jesus is going to take care of us." That is something I have kept in my mind for the rest of my life. Whenever things were tough I always asked Jesus to take care of me or the situation. My mother is the reason I have faith and have believed in God. Now I wonder where Jesus is and why He has allowed her to have such a horrible disease. I just don't understand and I'm not okay with this.
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