Beginning of the Final Journey

2010 - December 27 – Beginning of the Final Journey Home

Memory from Alberta’s Daughter, Anne

It was 7:30 AM; the phone rang; the caller ID showed it was my mother. This was not an unusual thing for her to call me early in the day; what was not usual was the pain and panic I heard in her voice. “Anne, I’m not sure what I need to do here”, she was saying. My mind raced with all the things that could happen to an eighty four year old still living on her on. She continued, “I’m in so much pain I’ve been taking those Lora tabs the doctor gave me.” Considering how high mother’s pain tolerance has always been I was surprised and shocked.

“Mother, what’s going on? What kind of pain are you having?” I asked.

“My shoulder and my hip are hurting so bad I just can’t seem to get any kind of relief.” She answered. “Should I call 9-11 or should I call Brother Elmer?” Brother Elmer is our pastor at the church mother attends regularly and the one I am still a member of. If it weren’t for Brother Elmer, his wife Anita, and Brother Doug, a deacon in our church I would have been worried about mother all the time. I had her call Brother Elmer.

Mother was at the hospital over eight hours; was given a shot of morphine and sent home to consult her family doctor.

When her doctor didn’t call her back she called me and asked me to try from Stanton to call Elizabethtown to get an appointment made. Her doctor didn’t call me back either, so I made arrangements to have her see, Dr. Heilig, the shoulder doctor she had been going to in Winchester and my doctor in Stanton, Troy Brooks, a Certified Physicians Assistant, was someone mother trusted.

2010 - December 30 – My Birthday and Picking up Records From the Hospital

When I went to the hospital to pick up the record for her December 27^th visit, I was given her records all the way back to 1994. I am a firm believer in God always having a reason for everything; so I started a very large notebook and put her records in chronological order, from 1994 to the December 27^th visit.

As I put the records into the notebook I come across a report from 2004 that shows a spot on her bladder; the doctor had never followed up on the report. When I asked mother why not she said that was the doctor that had moved back to New York and that she didn’t know anything about there being a spot on her bladder.

When we went to the appointment with Troy Brooks I took the note book with me and showed him the report. He scheduled a CT scan to be done at Clark Regional Hospital in Winchester, KY. The scan would show exactly what was going on and hopefully would let him be able to do something more than medication for her pain.

The CT was done on January the 5^th. The phone rang at 9: AM the next morning; January 6^th. It was Troy’s nurse; he wanted to see Mother as soon as possible. With a sense of foreboding, I said we would be there by 10:00 AM.

We were shown to a room almost as soon as we arrived. I knew as soon as I saw Troy’s face the news wasn’t good. Troy told us there were three masses; one in the bladder, one in the kidneys, and one in the lung.

Mother cried briefly. Troy gave her a hug, gently patting her shoulders. Then Mother looked up at Troy and asked, “Where do we go from here? What comes next?”

Troy told Mother that with her permission he would schedule some more tests to be ran that would tell if the masses were cancer or benign and then we would know how to proceed.

Mother told him then that was what we would do. By the time we left the office there were several tests scheduled to be done in the following weeks. Including a follow up appointment with Troy on February 4^th.