PHOTOS FROM HELL

In August of 2011 my mom, Laurie, suffered a terrible fall. She lived with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis for over 22 years and had recently moved to the midwest to allow her family to take over her care, as I had been her sole caretaker for my entire life up until that point. When her best friend (and lifelong cigarette-lover), the Good Dr Bob passed away, she asked her overbearing family for some space for a few days to grieve.

Despite her extremely limited mobility and use of a power wheelchair, she was still fiercely independent. On that Wednesday, her home care nurse had just left for the day when she fell in the bathroom, transferring back to her chair. During this fall, her femur was snapped in half- a compound protruding fracture. She attempted to summon help using her Life Alert button but it did not work and so she spent 3 days dying on the bathroom floor before her nurse returned and found her. It wasn’t that unusual for us to go a couple of days without talking, especially given the recent circumstances.

As her sole caregiver from birth to age 22, our relationship was beyond mother and child. Since the age of 16, we had discussed her wishes and plans for death and I knew that she wanted to be allowed to go when it was time, no life saving measure. no extended hospitalizations. I was her legal power of attorney but being in Montana at the time, I was NOT the one contacted when her accident happened.

Instead, her family selfishly steamrolled ahead with intubation and surgery. They did not contact me at all until this was all over and done with, I had no ability to stop them. What followed next can only be described as Hell. There isn’t enough space here to even begin to describe. All I will say is that she spent the next year and a half in a miserable hospice- the youngest person by 20 years- with no reprieve but for her own decision to stop treating her recurrent UTI’s and cease eating. From then, it took two agonizing months.

These photos are from three weeks after the accident.