Father's Day

I know my mom will someday kill me for posting pictures of her like this, but this is my personal journal & I need pictures like this.  I need her to see what she's been through & how amazing she really is.  For those who didn't know, my mom has been through a LOT in the last 3 months.

In April she had some problems with her colon.  It just decided it didn't want to work anymore & after 3 times going into the hospital, the doctors finally said they needed to do surgery.  They did surgery to remove a small part of her colon that wasn't working properly.  Everything was going well until about a week after the surgery.  Mom's blood pressure dropped & one by one things started turning south.  

My dad called & after praying about it, I knew I had to fly home.  I flew home to UT for 1 week.  Mom was in a coma & on a respirator.  She looked awful.  The day I flew in, the doctors took us all aside & told us to prepare for the worst.  She was NOT doing well & she would most likely die.  She got a kidney infection that took over her entire body.  Her body went septic & she filled with fluid (she gained 40 pounds in 2 days).  Her body was crushing itself from the inside out.  They rushed her to the Provo hospital & everybody was baffled as to what to do.  Her doctor (my dad's best friend) ran into the hospital about 2 hours before she was going to pass away screaming that he knew what it was that was killing her.  She had developed Abdominal Compartment Syndrome.  He opened her up again & LEFT HER OPEN.  (yes, she had a gaping hole in her stomach for 4 days.)  All the fluids were sucked out over 4 days.  When they opened her up, some of her organs were turning black (dying) from all the pressure.  They didn't know if they would heal on their own or not.  When they closed her up, the bowels had died so they had to remove most of them.  They had to do an illiostomy which is attaching a bag on the outside of your body to what was left of her intestines to catch her waste.  She will now have to change out this bag every two hours for the rest of her life.  :-(  

Things started to improve for a while, then on Memorial Day she suddenly threw up buckets of blood & flat lined.  My mom passed away for several minutes.  We thought it was over with.  We thought we had lost her.  But my mom is a fighter.  They revived her & got her heart beating again.  They had to do a full body blood transfusion (she had already had 12+ transfusions so far) & they had to research where the internal bleeding was stemming from.  She had SEVERAL blood clots & ulcers between her stomach & her intestine (as in over 10).  She was bleeding to death.  They had to cauterize the inside of her stomach to stop the bleeding.  At this point I knew I had to go back to UT for the summer to be with her & the rest of the family.

They FINALLY stopped the bleeding, but in turn completely closed off her stomach.  Nothing could get through.  She would never eat again.  :-(  She was still in a coma, still on a respirator.  I was losing hope at this point.  I drove in the day after school got out with all 5 kids hoping to help in any way I could.  I spent a couple nights in the hospital with her & went every day to visit.  Amazingly she started to improve & they even brought her out of the coma & took out the respirator.  Next they battled with inserting a feeding tube through the sealed off stomach opening.  It took 3 times, but miraculously they were able to get it through in the end.  She could now eat via feeding tube through the nose.  She was now able to gain some strength again.  On Father's Day she was able to get into a wheelchair for the first time in almost 2 months & was able to see her grand babies for the first time since all this happened.

The following pictures were taken on Father's Day.  Though mom will kill me for posting them, I wanted to share because they are pictures of my absolutely beautiful mother.  She is a fighter.  She is amazing & she can do things that I never could.  She has endured more than any human being should ever have to endure & she has endured quietly & has come out even stronger in the end.  My mom is my miracle.  My mom is my hero.

It was a great day for my dad.  Mom was outside with the family enjoying time with her grand babies.  Cari & I made a Father's Day dinner & brought it to the hospital for the family to enjoy (my dad & grandma were living at the hospital so that mom had someone with her 24 hours a day 7 days a week.)  It was the best Father's Day ever.