Coming Home to Sad news

Beverly Fleming- Loving mom and Grandma
After spending a great time with my new grand baby in Utah I came home September 11th. When I came home I found out my mom had pneumonia. She had it for the whole time I was gone to Utah and she was having a hard time breathing. I took her to see her doctor Tuesday Sept. 16th in the morning. The doctor agreed that mom needed oxygen and said from the chest x-ray that she still had pneumonia and wanted to change her antibiotic. After taking my mom home and getting her settled I got home about 3:30 pm. I get a call just after 4 pm from her asking me if I could take her to the hospital. The nurse that came to see her said she could not get her oxygen levels up. I drove her to the hospital and stayed till they were able to stabilize her. They admitted her about 8 pm. The next day they did a CT scan and mom called Dayna and I to come to the hospital to talk to the doctors. When we met with the doctors they told us that mom had Lung Cancer and for her to get her things in order. She didn't have long and to con cider Hospice home care. WOW what a blow. No warning... just hey you have cancer and you are going to die soon. Not knowing what to do next and the doctors telling us she would not be able to go home we talked to the Hospice people. Didn't really understand completely what was going on with that either. After talking at length with the guy from Hospice we were told mom could not go home and would be released to Hospice care. They released mom on Thursday the 18th to Hospice. They were suppose to release mom from the hospital at 7 pm and hospice to transport her to the facility. We drove to the facility and waited for mom to arrive. Well after waiting a while we found out that they didn't have transportation for her. They tried to call for another service to pick her up. When it got to be after 10 pm Dayna (my sister) and I went home and told them to call us when she got there. At 10:45 pm the hospital called and asked if mom was going to be picked up. I told them Hospice was taking care of it. I called hospice again and they told me the guy was on the way. I called mom and told her. After a long night she was finally taken to hospice home care facility. She stayed there for the weekend so they could get her stable. Dayna and I had to speak with the hospice social worker on Tuesday. After talking to him he said mom would never be able to go back to her home. What a shock! When you looked at mom you would never know anything was wrong with her except for her being on oxygen. I thought she could at least live at home with some help. I was wrong. The only solution was for her to come live at our house. Greg was in school and we had an extra room close to the bathroom and everything. Talk about a 180 in your life. The next thing I know they are moving in hospital beds, shower chairs, oxygen tanks, a wheelchair and walker. It is amazing how quickly your life can change. It took a bit to adjust to the situation. Like I said it wasn't like mom was bed ridden. She could move about the house as far as her oxygen cord would go. I asked the people at Hospice how long mom had left. They said 0 to 6 months but could not tell for sure. It depends on the person. Watching mom daily it seemed like we were in for the long hall. She had her appetite, she could get around but got out of breath easy. From the time mom was diagnosed with cancer till the day she died it was 7 weeks. We never had to go through the bad stuff and I think mom would have wanted it that way. Those 7 weeks were very busy ones as Dayna and I took turns caring for mom and we had to take care of her cats and apartment. It was tough but I'm glad I was able to be of service to her in those last weeks.