I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to return to the place where Mario left his earthly body behind. It’s the local hospital. Why I’ve had to go back, repeatedly, is primarily due to the fact there are a lot of older people in my life. Every time I have to go there, I relive a little bit of those 3 days, now over 4 years ago (can not believe it’s already been over 4 years).

I’m also subject to what would be an absolutely overwhelming amount of emotions and physical distress if I’d not had a lot of practice building energetic “barriers” around myself. I think even the average person is subjected to that in a hospital, let alone, someone like me who is empathic.

Things reached a crescendo with my mom’s health. Observing her condition I was campaigning to take her to the ER on Monday night and she was still having none of it. Things were deteriorating the whole week prior, leaving me exhausted with stress and worry. She did acquiesce and let me take her to an urgent care facility on Saturday afternoon where they officially diagnosed diabetes and prescribed antibiotics for her leg infection. We came home. She took all of one of the antibiotic pills but my midnight Sunday night, she was getting much sicker. She couldn’t keep food or water down and starting having a pain in her side (with her appendix removed long ago, it was anyone’s guess what was causing it). Hence the reason I was trying to get her into the ER Monday night.

Sometimes, events have an timeline of playing out that ends up being critical. If that timeline doesn’t happen on a perfect schedule, things might not turn out great. Let me explain …

So I mentioned my exhaustion leading up to Monday night. I went home, thinking on the short drive back that I SHOULD be spending the night at my mom’s house to look after her, but something was overriding my mind about that. Yes, it was what I felt should happen, but no, there was some reason why I actually need to just go home. If I hadn’t already spent years learning to listen to my inner guidance system, I would have brushed off that thought as some selfish or self-serving idea and spent the night at my mom’s house.

My mom ended up calling me 4 times from 5am to 6:30am on Tuesday morning. Even though I had my phone ringer up as high as it could go and only about a foot away from my head, I was asleep so soundly that it did not wake me. I woke up at 6:45am, looked at my phone, saw all the messages, sat up and called her back. She said, “I need to go to the hospital”. I dialed 911 to get the paramedics involved and in about 5 minutes and gotten dressed, fed all 4 cats and was out the door. I beat the paramedics over there by about 7 minutes. Paramedics of course checked all vital signs, confirmed she wanted to go to the hospital, and got her in the ambulance. I followed behind.

If you’ve never had to endure a trip to the ER, count yourself lucky. I imagine it’s very similar no matter what ER you go to. As people are checked in, they’re often triaged outside of the actual ER, then sent to the waiting room. When my mom got to the ER, vital signs were still in normal range, so she was triaged back to the waiting room. I’ve never had a trip to the ER take under 3 hours to actually get to a room in the ER. This was no exception. It was 3.5 hours before we got to a room.

Within about 30 minutes of getting to the ER room, my mom started crashing. Her blood pressure dropped dangerously low, she was in and out of consciousness, and her heart rate dropped as low as 34. A team of nurses quickly set up an IV with Atropine to get the heart rate and blood pressure back up. Over the next 4 or so hours, there were many visits from various doctors as they tried to determine everything that was going on. Spoiler alert, it was a LOT.

The most serious issue was likely septic shock had set and that’s what made her vitals tank. And here’s where that thing about timing comes in. In most every ER setting I’ve been, the push is to make a quick determination of what’s wrong and most of the time, you are treated there and then released, especially if your vital signs are normal. Had we gotten to the ER shortly after my mom’s initial call to me at 5am, they might have done just that and the crash would have happened at home.

So it was quickly determined that my mom needed to be hospitalized and not just a regular old room, but the intensive care unit. They kept her stabilized until all the transfer paperwork was complete and a room was ready, about another hour. By that time, it was about 6:30pm at night. We’d spent the entire day in the ER.

I walked with the nurse pushing my mom’s ER bed over to the ICU and I was told to wait in the lounge until they got her situated. Naturally my anxiety was through the roof. It’s been about a year since I felt anxiety that bad.

I know my way around that hospital pretty well by this point and I knew that on the way to the ICU, we would pass the PCU wing. It was PCU room #13 where Mario’s final days played out.

I waited about 20 minutes before I walked down to the double doors for that section of ICU rooms and clicked the intercom button to announce who I was there to see. They buzzed me in and I went over to room 9. I noticed right away on the monitor (fun fact, I once had a client who made medical monitors, so I’ve know how they work and how to read them for many years) and noticed her temperature was 104.4. A couple nurses came in with about 8 ice bags and started administering Tylenol to try to prevent that from going higher while also hooking up about 4 other bags of meds on the IV.

I stayed a couple more hours as she kind of drifted in and out before going home to attempt to get some food and some sleep.

The next day, we also found out she has a fungal blood infection and it was suspected that the sepsis or that infection was also responsible for the erratic and low heart rate and blood pressure. They were talking about possibly having to install a pacemaker, but nothing could be done until the infections were treated. She also had to receive insulin for the diabetes.

All things considered, today she was trending upwards. They did a special scan to check the heart and it checked out ok with no bacterial infection actually in the heart. But they had to use general anesthesia in order to do that test. General anesthesia is risky even in perfectly healthy people, but in older people especially it can bring on temporary cognitive issues. So this evening she was experiencing that. I think my mom said it best herself at one point, “I’m a mess”.

Each night I’ve left the hospital, I’ve walked down that long hallway and past the PCU rooms and each night I try to make the right turn down the PCU wing and I cannot. It’s already overwhelming emotion knowing that in pretty much every room in a hospital, someone might have expired or experienced a lot of suffering. Just spending all these hours in the ICU is a test. There are people who are there now who will not make it out of there alive. Even in my mom’s case, it’s very touch and go. While there’s improvement, anything can happen when you’re 84, have had untreated diabetes for who knows how long, and have multiple life-threatening infections.

It’s basically one of those hope for the best, prepare for the worst type of situations. Even if my mom fully recovers, there is the question of will she accept the fact that she will need medications and regular doctor check ins? I figure she’s either going to have one of those “come to Jesus” moments or she’s going to double down on being obstinate.

And I feel like I do have walk by that PCU room 13.