It's Over - Now I Need To Know

The memorial service for my Mom was yesterday. We buried her ashes in a very tearful ceremony and I cried buckets. I had my son an husband to hold me together, it was a difficult day. At the luncheon following the service, Mom's friends talked about her life and the impact she had made on them. It cheered me up to a degree, although I will miss her terribly.

Now I need to know the following things and will do my damnedest to get answers. When she was first admitted to hospital they kept telling me she was scheduled for an MRI. It never happened, every day when I inquired I was told the one and only MRI machine at the hospital was broken. As a result I was never really told whether she in fact had a stroke or was suffering from heart failure. I need to know why the nurses where to "busy" to get her out of bed to toilet her. I need to know why I always found her in dirty diapers and when I asked for her to be tended to I was always told "we're too busy right now".

I need to know why no one paid the slightest bit of attention when I questioned her swollen limbs and suggested she might have a blood clot. I need to know why, when her breathing was so laboured she wasn't given a gadget they have that makes you blow in and out to exercise your lungs and prevent hospital pneumonia. I need to know their justification for all the drugs she was given, most of which didn't really make sense to me.

I need to know why a bladder infection, caused by dirty diapers, wasn't caught earlier and in all likelihood contributed to her death. I need to know why I never once met the Cardiologist, why I wasn't allowed to talk with him, why everyone from the charge nurse to geriatric physician avoided answering every time I asked. I need to know why when they finally decided she should have a pacemaker the wait was seven days to get it put in. It's not like it's a huge operation, it took less than one hour.

Mostly I need to know why nurses who really don't like the elderly and treat them with disdain are permitted or even want to work there. I was constantly accused of being "too intense", I guess I wasn't intense enough to save her life. When I told Mom's GP that she had died he was shocked, he didn't think she was that sick. She wasn't, they made her more sick in the hospital. The day I took her there, she begged me not to, she said to me "I will die there". I guess she was right and I was wrong.

Once I find out all these things I will be able to put this behind me and go on with my life. I owe it to Mom to find out all these things, and for all of us who will be aging and at the mercy of bad hospital care. If we don't change things the future doesn't bode well.