Secure from Special Detail

 The trip to Iowa was uneventful. The funeral was Monday, December 11th. There were a good number of people and Mom was remembered fondly. The trip back was likewise uneventful.

And now we resume our regular routine, with a Mom shaped hole in it.

A Sad Announcement

What they found was massive necrosis of the bowels. The docs had to remove 40 cm (that's 16 inches) of bowel to re-establish the stoma, but if the necrosis had all been removed there wouldn't have been enough left of the bowel to sustain life.

In addition, the collapsing of the capillaries that caused the death of the stoma led to a cascade failure of the circulatory system. Saturday morning the nurses found the tongue necrotic when they were cleaning her mouth.

Saturday afternoon, on the second of December, the decision was made to remove life support. The last piece to be removed was ventilation. The tube was taken out at 2:10 PM, my father went in to sit with her, and at 2:15 she went to be with her Lord. She was 80 years old.

My father is a rock. He has his faith to sustain him, and he knows he will see her again. My siblings and I suspect he will do so a lot sooner than we would like. If he is still with us in six months time I will be surprised.

I will miss my mother greatly. 57 years just wasn't enough time with her.

Back to NoVa

 This time no one is liking what the docs are saying.

UPDATE: I just talked to Brother, who is NOT an hysterical basket case like Elder Sister, and got the full story.

Overnight, Mom's blood pressure dropped, and the medicine they gave her pulled the blood from her extremities. 

Unfortunately, the stoma (which is medspeak for the hole they just made to attach the colostomy bag) is an extremity, and being newly formed, it died due to the lack of blood flow.

So, Mom is going back into surgery to fix that, and anything else they find, and then hopefully we will be back on the road to recovery.

Everything seems to happen when I leave to go back home. I guess I will just have to stay this time until she is on her way back to Iowa.