Navigating Grief and Loss: Personal Stories and Lessons Learned (Part 1)

In this heartfelt episode, Ashley and Tarra share both their deeply personal journey through grief after losing her mother and offers insights into the complex emotional and practical aspects of saying goodbye. Whether you're coping with loss yourself or supporting someone else, this candid conversation explores the raw realities of mourning and the nuanced process of healing.

Main Topics:

• Personal experiences with grief and the emotional impact of losing a parent
• Physical and mental responses to significant loss, including internal shakiness and emotional waves
• The long and complex journey of end-of-life care, including navigating healthcare and hospice challenges
• Grief as an ongoing process, not a linear path, with ups and downs
• Practical considerations: managing estate, insurance, and legal matters after loss
• The importance of community, family, and emotional tethers during grief
• Reflections on how grief alters perceptions of life, identity, and future

The Ashley Clinic

We Are Building a New Way of Staying Healthy

Several factors provided the inspiration for the creation of the Ashley Clinic.  Primarily, corporate medicine changed the focus from the patient centered care model to a business management platform. The healthcare industry now focuses on time and money management, resulting in inflated healthcare costs.  Many patients are discouraged with the current overpriced system, causing them to seek treatment later in their disease process, oftentimes worsening their outcomes. In the interest of patient centered care, health, and well being, Ashley wanted to provide a more affordable platform to the people in the community she grew up in. Utilizing her advanced education and skills, Ashley provides exceptional healthcare at an affordable cost. Additionally, Ashley uses alternative approaches to health maintenance by offering integrative medicine practices as well.

Website: 

https://theashleyclinic.com/

Email

hello@TheAshleyClinic.com

Phone

(850) 741-3146

Address

2400 S Hwy 29
Cantonment, FL  32533

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

We're here to educate, empower, and entertain you. What a point free episode. This is healthcare without the bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Oh, we're gonna we're not gonna dwell. Okay. We're not gonna dwell. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

This is a little too biggie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

All right.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Welcome to Cheats and Ash. Dae dae dae dee. Nothing again. No, forget I'm just kidding. So um today we're talking about grief. Grief. And more grief. Yeah. So. And the reason why we're talking about this is because I just lost my mother four weeks ago. And I lost mine 15 years ago. So I was basically a child in my mind. Yeah. Not really. Well, you were. No. I was in my 30s. Still. God, I'm that's interesting. Hmm. When did that happen? Probably after I lost my mom, I just aged incredibly quickly. Things changed so rapidly, so quickly. Like the day of, it was like all changed. Matriarch, here I am. Orphan. That's how I felt. I felt like an orphan. Oh. So um, we're gonna talk about this, and it's not gonna be perfect. It's not gonna be polished, but it's definitely going to be honest. A hundred percent. Well, I get the shakes already. Yes. So apparently that happens when you go through significant grief. You get this internal shakiness. It's kind of like an adrenaline rush, but it's not, you don't see it externally. Like you feel it down in your core. And I'm not the only person. I mean, other people say, Yes, you feel it. It's the weirdest thing. And every time you talk about her, you get it, or I'm feeling it now. Um, I feel like I think I've made a mistake. It's that sensation. Like I feel like I've made a mistake, it's and I have an internal panic, like a quick panic. That's the feeling, but it's prolonged in the early stages. Yeah, it's that's that feeling for me. Like the I'm like my cortisol just immediately is jacked or something. I I'm not sure. That's I'm not I'm just throwing that out there as you know how it feels, but sweaty, just icky. It waxes. It's like you've done something wrong and you have no recourse. Irrevocable. Irrevocable. It's the weirdest feeling. I cannot. And we're gonna really try not to cry.

unknown 2:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Really try. Because I'm doing better. Yeah, well, you move through it, you don't assist fresh. This is really fresh because I have moments where something is just it, you know, oh, that's my mom. Smells. Oh god, songs. Music was huge. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, she was like updated all the times with all the music and everything in the 80s and 90s. So, you know, anytime I'm listing my favorite stuff, like crap, there's mom. Or even the 70s stuff, like Wildfire. That song Wildfire about the damn horse. My mama didn't have a horse, but that song makes me think of burnt. I don't know why. Y'all go look up Wildfire, Michael Murphy, I think. Michael Murphy, some, I don't know. Wildfire one's a good one. I don't know. My mom was a uh she cooked. She was like that was her cooked too. That was her artist, artistic. I haven't done that yet. She I haven't cooked her dressing or her lemonized box pie. That right there is like for me, like every even now. So when I got married, my mom made me a recipe box, like old school, you know, recipe box. And um, and that is like my biggest treasure. Oh, yeah. Like mine had journals all over in her room with a lot of um Bible verses and how to apply them to your life. And um, she wrote letters to God, she wrote letters to us, all of these things. So I have that and I absolutely treasure that. Um, but then yeah, the food part was yeah, I haven't made anything she did, but she would sneak in my house and I have a recipe book that had like the cards in them. And so she would write down her recipes in her handwriting, and I found one the other day. I was like, I can't believe you did this to me. I'm never gonna be able to make this. Well, I'm gonna. So mine collected them. So I have I have reci so you know, she was a CRNA. Um, let's talk about your mom. So my mom was um a nursingest uh for before they were cool. Before they were cool, and um for like 48 years or something, um she was in it, yeah. So she developed a cough that she thought was a an allergic reaction to the hospital. So it was so it was after hurricane Ivan, so 2005-ish. It actually started before that, but she just thought it was like pollen too. Because we're nurses and that's what we do. And so she developed this cough, and then it was um after hurricane Ivan, and then all the construction, all the hospitals were damaged, all the things, right? All the mold, and so the mold. And so she assumed that's like she had a pneumonitis type thing. Yeah, nobody really was able to diagnose what was going on. It was a really it was a whole event. Um, and then uh she and she was still working as a cRNA up until then. So she turned 70 in August of 2011, like still work. Well, in May, she actually put in her leave to quit and retire in 2011 because she had an about pneumonia, which really like just took it out of her. She was hospitalized and she was like, you know what? I think maybe maybe it's time. And pneumonia is bad. You were worn out for weeks. That's just in a healthy person, you're still worn out for weeks, just the fatigue and the weakness is terrible. I can't even 70 was 70 an underlying. And they thought it was bronchiectasis, they thought it was, I don't know, they she had we had one of every test in the world done, and it was always inconclusive. Nobody could pinpoint what she had. And then um I actually I bought a house in August of 2011, and she shows up to do my walkthrough on the 31st of August with oxygen on, and I'm like, what in the world is happening here? Well, and she had received actually a final diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis on the 26th of August, my walkthrough. So before that, she was not on oxygen. She turned 70 on August 4th. We had a big party.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Um, she was not on oxygen, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

And then she um just had this abrupt, like, poof, decline. And then on like the 15th or 16th of September, she had a coughing spell in the middle, and it was like 10 o'clock at night. And my sister always called her to check on her at night. I was at work naturally, and um That's where we live. That's right. It's where all the big things happen. And um my sister called me and was like, hey, mom is having a hard time like regain regrouping from this coughing fit. What do you think I should do? I said, You call an ambulance right now and send her ass to the hospital. And Judy said Judy said, No, actually, my sister told me later that the first thing my mom said was, as she's like, Hey mom, what you doing?

SPEAKER_00 7:13

And mom's like, coughing, coughing, coughing, like bronchospasm, bronchospasm. And the only thing she could squeak out is, don't call Tara.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Don't you dare call her. And so Dee Ger like panicked and called me.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

I mean, this is my interpretation of how it went, but I assume Deidre's like, okay, I don't know what to do.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Judy usually gives us all the medical advice. Let me call Tara. And I'm like, You send her ass to the hospital right now. And so we did. And my mom, angry, trudged all the way to the front of the house to unlock the door so the firefighters didn't kick the door open. She didn't want to replace that.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

God, and then she went in and like it, the decline was so fast. They like she's on like a non-rebre. You know, that day she had gone to get her dry cleaning, she had lobster at the alehouse, she had a meeting at church, and then boom, we're in the hospital.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

So then, you know, we've done this at once before. And so we're like, you know what? That'll be all right. We're gonna, we're gonna rally.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

She's we're already preparing for trials in uh Tulane, I think.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Um, and so she uh the doc's like, hey, listen, you know, we were wrong. You don't have three to five years. You got seven days. Yeah. And I my mom is like, you know, non-rebrigger, totally lucid. Excuse me. She's like, I I literally, I was like, what? Have you ever seen anyone die in seven days without like being like and then you're like on off, you know? And mom's like, no, seven days. And it was exactly she just so it was an acute, it was a very similar to yours. Like we didn't know for a long time for a long time it was gonna be like this is what was gonna happen, and then it did, and so we were not prepared for that at all. No, at all. Weirdly enough, thinking knowing uh even knowing what I know, I feel like I was the daughter been more prepared. Um but yeah, no. Thanks, Judy. Yeah, thanks, Judy. Gosh, I don't know what would be worse. I really I mean everybody's their own. So that's my always my question. So I my dad died when I was like 27 or 26, and then my mother died when I was like 30, 31, something like that. And so you were an orphan quick, yeah. And my siblings were the appropriate age, so my my brother older or older than I am.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

So, you know, my mom was 70, they were 40 and 50-ish. That was that seems about yeah, uh an appropriate time in your mind.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

I mean, there's no appropriate time, but we don't like it when that transition naturally occurs is a little bit later than 30. And so um Usually. Usually. It's obviously there's nothing, none of this when you talk about this has a box to put it. No. But yeah, but that's how I felt immediately like an orphan. Like, what? I don't even know. You don't even know what you don't know. I don't even know what I don't know. Like, I don't know how to do my tax. Even at 50. There's a lot of things I didn't know that we're gonna cover really quick. Yes, not right this second, but anyway, finish with you, mom.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

So that's and that's my story. It was uh incredibly traumatic.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Um I had some terrible experiences in the hospital, and she happened to choose a hospital that neither she nor I worked at, which made it even more difficult to navigate things, if you know. And I I I don't remember, I'm like, seriously, Judy, like what this one? What are we doing here? Like how because she didn't want you to have to deal with that every day that you came to work. No, I'll tell you why.

unknown 10:56

Tell me why.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Do tell. Her pulmonologist graduated from Duke as she graduated from Duke, uh-huh, and he had really blue eyes. I'm just gonna leave that there.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

And I think she thought he was a very handsome man, and she liked him, and he liked, you know, he was nice, but it was very interesting how that all played out.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

But yeah, that's why I think like why wouldn't my mom who lived in Lungs for almost 50 years get bigger opinions than local that we did it? Well, I didn't matter. Yeah, you did. I did. Um Deborah. Um, Deborah was a seamstress, she manufactured drapes for interior decorators in the area. Originally, my grandmother had the business, and then when my grandmother died, um, she took over the business, but she'd been working for a long time. And the entire reason why I got into nursing is because I hated measuring shear. It would crawl and I would cry. And so my mother said, Listen, you're a nursing school. Okay, I don't want to measure shear anymore. Because that shit would crawl. And if it was a sixteenth of an inch off, you've had to redo it. Because my grandmother would not tolerate a sixteenth of an inch. Nope. Sounds about right. Yeah. So she was a seamstress, had this business for years. And so it's an art. It is an art, it's a dying art. Like if you ask me to make a cornice, a headboard, drapes, pinch pleat, anything, I can I can sell your face. It's not gonna be pretty. But um, so probably so Shelby was in the fifth grade. So they had their fifth grade field trip, and she said they went to the Capitol, and she said, God, I just couldn't. How many years ago was that, you think? So Shelby's 20, and she was 10. So 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

And so she's walking up the Capitol steps and she said, Y'all just go on. I can barely make it up these steps. And then she had to get back up on the bus to get on the bus to come home from Tallahassee. And she said, That was so troublesome. She didn't understand what was going on. I'm just so weak. And so she said, Well, I started that no carb diet. Maybe I'm just exhausted. Naturally, yes. Okay. So, but for years prior to that, we had noticed we'd be walking in the mall, me, her, and my sister, we'd walk in the mall, and she'd be like, just go ahead, I'll meet y'all there. I'm just tired. Well, my mother worked like a dog. She worked hard. Being a seamstress is very difficult work. It's very labor, it's heavy, it's lab it's labor intensive. And she worked all the time. As a business owner, as a lot of you know who are business owners, when you're a business owner, you work your ass off. You work more than your employees, and you're the last one to get paid, first one there, first one to leave. It's just a whole thing. 24-7. 24-7. And she even did that with drapes and and bed spreads and all of the things because her decorators would need things out in a certain amount of time. And so she worked herself to death. So we thought she was just tired at the time. So anyway, fast forward to Shelly's fifth grade, and she can't get up the steps really good at the Capitol. She can't get up the steps on the bus, and she's like, something's wrong. Okay, so then she started having these little falls. I'll never forget. She, her driveway has azaleas on both sides, and she opened her door one day and she got out, she was and just went completely to the side. I said, What are you doing? She goes, I just fail. I'm like, okay. So her balance was off. I'm like, what is going on with you? Well, then she started complaining, I have to hold the hall, the walls in the hallway as I walk down the hall. I'm like, why are you doing that? And she just, I don't know. And then she says, I gotta use this cane to walk. And then I said, Okay, we're gonna go get a neuro eval because your right leg is dragging a little bit. I'm like, what is going on? So we go see a neurologist. And he says, it's neuropathy. I said, because she's dragging her leg, it's just neuropathy with no underlying etiology, no diabetes, no diabetes, nothing. My mother had nothing. She had she took a 12.5 HCTZ is the only medication she ever took for a smidge of high blood pressure.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

I'm like, okay. So shaky. So um I said, okay, this is weird. So we ended up going to some neurosurgeons and um MRIs, nerve conduction studies, all these things. Now, nerve conduction studies are subjective. It depends on who's doing them. So I had noticed with my mother, with her dragging that leg, I'm checking reflexes, I'm checking um just spasticity in general. So I'm popping her thigh one day, and her leg is popping. I'm touching the middle of her thigh. I'm like, Jesus Christ, why are you doing that? I said, okay, let's get MRIs, get MRIs. She's got a little spinal stenosis. They want to do surgery as I was like, there's we're not doing surgery. She doesn't have back pain. She doesn't have trouble with bowel or bladder. She's just having trouble walking and she's off balance. Something is a foot. And they're like, I said, I want a second opinion from the other guy. So the other guy comes in prepared with the MRI in hand to back up his counterpart and say, mm-mm, it's spinal stenosis. Like, no, it's not. She's teeter-tottering and not having trouble walking. She's not the typical spinal stenosis kind of patient. You have a little she's not doing that. Or the back pain. Nothing, no back pain whatsoever. I'm not doing surgery on your back if you have no back pain because who knows, you may end up having back pain after back surgery. So infection or Yeah, I don't want to do that. Why cut on her if you don't definitively know? So anyway, I said, we'll just get a Shans. I take her down to Shans. Dr. Weimer saw her, and he had all of her paperwork from every single um uh visit we'd had, all of the imaging and everything. And he goes, Hereditary spastic paraplegia. I'm like, what the f is that? What is that? I'm like, who knows what that is? I've never even heard of it in all of the years that I had been a nurse. I've never heard of it. I'm like, what is that? It's a hereditary female autosomal dominant um upper motor neuron disease. So basically, the your brain sends signals to your legs. It mostly affects your legs, but it can be complex hereditary spastic paraplegia where it affects your arms and speech and everything else, kind of like ALS. It's like a long, drawn-out form of ALS, basically. So like the Stephen Hawking syndrome. Yeah, like that, but like a mix. Right. It's the weirdest thing. So her legs started going. So she eventually got on a cane, got on a walker. Five years ago, she was in a wheelchair for three years, and then two years ago, she's in the bed. I remember that. Yeah. I remember when I think I'm the one that's like absolutely. You gotta get her in a bedroom. You gotta get her in the back. Because we were picking her up. So anytime she had to go to the bathroom or transfer from her recliner to her wheelchair, my husband Joey and I would pick her up. Joey would hold her. I would literally snatch a recliner up that wasn't on wheels. I would snatch that out from behind her, put it over the side, grab a bedside commode, put that in her, sit her down. Okay, mom, let's get up. Then we'd get her back up, and she's dead weight at this point because she can't hardly stand. She could use her arms a little bit and she would push up on the walker in front of her. Nothing. Nothing. And so we're, and then I pull the bedpan out, I'm wiping her up, clean her up, and then I then I haul the wheelchair, which directionally was just jacked up because it was a second-hand wheelchair that my dad had gotten from some storage unit. I don't know. Anyway, so I'd snatch that and put that under her. So we did that for three years. We're snatching chairs out from under her. And I remember you telling me you not wanting to do the bed because you knew she would not get out. She was not going to get out. And that was like, you were literally like, yeah, no, uh we can't do that yet. I wasn't ready and she went ready. She was not having it. She was not, I remember. She said, absolutely not. I'm not dying in that bed.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

I was like, well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

So two years ago, April and two years ago, we had to put her in the bed. We could no longer pick her up. I mean, it was so difficult at that point. And um, Joey was going out of town for his guys' trip weekend. Again, yearly thing, anyway. Um, and so I said, Mom, I can't do this by myself. And my dad and my sister were completely incapable of doing it. My sister got just emotionally upset having to do it. And then my dad was my dad's 80. Right. He can't do it. Right. So um we might be able to hand you things, but three things, but the movie chairs, a recliner that's not on a wheel, I'm literally scooting it across the carpet and two bounds. I mean, we got good at it, and then flinging that bedside kimoner there and flinging it back and flinging a wheelchair. I mean, we were flinging shit everywhere, not literally, but anyway. So then she gets in the bed and she's in the bed for two years, and then slowly declining. And then last fall, she had taken this weird turn where it started affecting her upper limbs and her voice and her breathing. And I'm like, what is happening? This is not HSV. Then I questioned, oh my God, what is this? And so we did genetic testing. I did mine, she did hers, and neither one of us have hereditary spastic paraplegia, but we have limb girdle and muscular dystrophy in our genetics. And I'm like, oh shit. So the way it there's no cure for these diseases, it's just maintenance and just um supportive care. So um keeping enough muscle on board, not too much, just enough. So it doesn't affect what? I just had a patient with something similar to this. I didn't even put two and two together. But it was like 80. Yeah. So and you can have a regular life expectancy with these disease processes. You just have to maintain your mobility. So that was last fall. Maintaining the mobility is so hard. It was hard because she had actually ruptured her. Oh god, what was that? Iliel, no, not IT band. The PSOAS. PSOAS tendon. She had ruptured it, I don't know, five, yeah, five years ago when she got in the wheelchair. She had ruptured it five years ago. I remember that. It was terrible. She is that patient in the hallway that is screaming in pain. And I was like, holy shit, that's my mother. My mother never complained. Like she like when have lacerations and everything is she'd tape it up, keep going. She'd run an industrial needle across her finger around the sewing machine and just pull it out, keep going. Jesus, but this was unbelievable. So anyway, so the Saturday morning before she passed, she woke up and said, eyes wide, bewildered, scary, scared me. And she said, My dad called and said, Your mom, something's wrong. I'm like, oh shit. And I live like five minutes away. So I go over there and she's sitting up in bed. She's like, No, no, bye-bye, no bye bye, no bye bye. And I'm like, oh my God, what's happening? Because we had just had dinner on Thursday night. Yeah. And then I had dinner on Friday night with Pam, and then Saturday. Yeah, because y'all, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were, I remember this. And so Saturday morning, all this happens, and I look at her and I'm like, what's going on? And she's like, I don't know. I think I'm dying. And I'm like, I said, okay, I'm not gonna argue with her. Right. We know this is coming. And honestly, through this process, I had already grieved my mother because I've already lost the mom that I knew, the one that would. I mean, me and my mom were thick as thieves. We would go on every errand together. I mean, I'm the one, the only one that took her to Shands. I mean, we've made multiple trips, spending. Anyway, you know, we just were best friends. And you already agree that part. Do you remember having that almost anger component to it? That's what I'm saying. I realized that today. I am so pissed off. Why are you sick? I'm pissed off. I've been robbed of her last 10 years of life. And this is what's really shitty is before she got in the wheelchair, she's walking around this table, literally like holding herself like this, and baby stepping around this table trying to finish out these drapes. And one of these motherfucking decorators calls her and says, When are you gonna get that finished? I've already been waiting on this for two weeks. And I said, Bitch, come get your shit. My mama's done. They don't give a shit. No one gives a shit about your mom. They say they do, but they really don't. They don't give a shit. So anyway, I made her quit. So she never got to retire. And I got pissed, and I'm still kind of mad because I feel like I have been robbed. My children have been robbed of 10 at 15 years maybe of her life, where she was supposed to retire. She was supposed to hang out with us and she was supposed to do all the fun things and go do all the errands and not have anything else to do and not have to work her fucking ass off. Yeah. And mine too. Mine retired on the 23rd of September and died on the 25th. Fucking ridiculous. So also, but I didn't have kids at that time, so I I had Vance the next year. Yeah. I'm gonna think, how old was my mom? My mom was 71 when she passed. She would have been 72 this May. And mine was 70. Yeah. And how old were your kids? When so Shelby was 10, Fia was little. Little. So she was 45. Yeah. Anyway, so Saturday morning everything changes. Oh God, here's some truth. So I feel like I was abandoned by hospice. She'd been on hospice for about two years now, maybe. Where they would come out and they would help bathe her and just kind of check in on her, see how things were going. And so, and it wasn't her nurse or anything, it was just the group in general. So I'd called, um, I was busy with her all day. I did not have time to stop and call them and say, hey, this is what's going on. I didn't know where to find the number, it just wasn't available to me. I could have looked it up, I'm sure. But I was like, I didn't thought about that too. When you when you were doing that, I was like, I should do this, I should figure out who this is. But by the time I got a break, you had figured it out. Yeah, by 7 p.m., by 7 p.m. And I'd gotten over there at like, I don't know, eight or nine o'clock that morning and had been with her till 7 p.m. and probably did a good 750 squats that day because then she was very restless and she was like, fix my gown. So I'd fix her gown and I'd sit down. She goes, Oh no, no, no, come fix the button right here. Okay, fix this, fix the church. She couldn't do anything. She could barely feed herself at that point. And when I fed my mother for the last time, I realized, holy shit, I've just fed my mother, and I never had to do that before, but it was soup. So she can't, she couldn't use utensils or anything. Right. So I'm just, did you realize it was the last time? No, no, you never do. I wonder, sometimes you do. Sometimes you can do that. I know that her last coffee was her last coffee because when I gave her the soup, I was having to sit her straight up so she wouldn't strangle. It didn't hit her goozle just right. So I was having to sit her up, and I was like, oh, her swallowing's declined and her breathing sounds funky weird. So I ended up calling hospice at seven o'clock, and they said, Oh, we're gonna have a nurse come out. Um, we'll get the courier to get some more things because I called them and I said, I think it's time to make my mom comfortable. I said, Things have changed. She's declined rapidly over the past, I don't know, 24 hours, maybe. I don't know. Something's going on. And as a clinician, I know it's the right thing to do. This is what we're doing, we're good to go. But then I needed a validation as a daughter. As a decision. You should never got that. No, I never got that because they said, Well, we'll send a nurse out to evaluate her and then we'll decide on the morphine. I'm like, I said, Look, I'm a nurse, I'm actually a nurse practitioner. Can you just not take my word for it? I just need somebody to help me. And she said, Oh, okay, yeah, we'll send the nurse out and we'll send the courier out to go get the medicine. We'll call it in, blah, blah, blah. I said, Great. Well, the only person that came out was the courier. Right. And he hands me the morphine and he says, Hey, do you know how to use this? I said, Yeah. He goes, Okay, bye. I was like, Right. Okay. Yeah, I can do this. I can totally do this. I said, Mom, are you ready? And I asked her, she's like, okay. I said, this will help you breathe. Because she's breathing four to five times a minute, which is still apnea coming. She was having 30-second periods of apnea. She would take two breaths and then stop 30 seconds, take two breaths. Anyway. So that was Saturday. And then she asked me not to leave. And I lied. And I said, Mom, I'm gonna go up here real quick. And she's she heared for some reason her hearing was so heightened. So I'm at the front of the house talking to my dad. I said, Dad, I gotta go home for just a few hours to get like and I left at like three in the morning. And I said, I gotta go home for a few hours. I'm tired. Let me just get a little bit of sleep. She yells from the back, you can sleep in your dad's chair. I'm like, oh my God. She heard me. And I said, Mama, okay, yep, okay. And I'd left and he stayed there with her for the next couple hours. I slept three or four hours and then I came back and kept going. And anyway, so that progressed into from doing morphine every four hours to every two hours, to every one hour. The nurses came out Monday or Sunday afternoon after I'd talked to, I'd finally got a hold of one of them, and they came out Sunday and we gave her a bath and they came out daily from then on out. But she had just slowly deteriorated and declined. Did they ever do uh an evaluation? No. Okay. The nurse never came out and did an evaluation. Now, her her hospice nurse, the one that came all the time, I guess that could count in as evaluation. I don't know. I just know that she came out and she was like, Yeah, she's different. Um yes, she is different. And so anyway, so Wednesday night into Thursday morning, breathing was agonal. She had the, you know, that rattle that they get because you can't swallow your own secretion. So it's given her hygosamine under the tongue and death. Um and then she passed at 1210 Thursday morning. And I was there. I said, you know, she was there for my first breath. I'm gonna be there for her last. Mm-hmm. Because I didn't want to miss it. Right. And I didn't, so yeah. I didn't miss it. But I really felt abandoned by hospice at that point. My I we were in-house. Damn. I wasn't gonna cry. We were in inpatient and our situation wasn't any better. And it's terrible. And that's what we want to educate people on is you know, what to expect because my mom was given a PCA pump. She was incapable of using a PCA pump.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

And so I broke every cardinal rule as a nurse. I don't give a shit. I mean, I was like every day because she was. Remember when I called you and told you give her a nurse's dose because the country dose we did it. Pushed you out of her vagina. You better make it comfortable. I did. I said, Mama. And that's the other thing, too. On Tuesday, I was just sobbing and laying on her. I said, Mama, did I make the right decision? And she said, Yes. And I said, Mama, I said, if you're ready, I'm ready. I said, Are you ready? She goes, I'm ready. I said, Okay, thank God. And then we would put on little movies and stuff because she always watched, she had her favorite movies that she watched, and one of them was that damn jungle cruise with the rock. And she woke up for a second and she goes, killer dolphins. And I'm like, What the fuck? What do you mean, killer dolphins? Oh, it's on the movie. There's some killer dolphins or poor money. So it was in her mind. It was in her, she could hear it. Yeah. Oh, and then everything was gabapentin because she took gabapentin in large amounts, the maxed-out dose because the spasticity require, you know, neuron because of nerves, and then also baccalaven. She was on maxed out on those doses for the spasticity of her muscles. So imagine imagine having your muscles feel like you're in a Charlie horse all over your body all the time. And that's what it felt like to her. But then it got to the point where the neuropathy was so bad she couldn't feel it, but you could see it. Anyway, so she would everything was Gabba Penton. So she sh she so she said, let's watch Gabba Penton. And I said, What? Gabba Penton. Bridgerton, because that was the last thing she had on. She goes, Gabba Penton. I was like, okay. So we watched Bridgerton, but then you fast forward through them sex scenes because those are unnecessary. She said, Unnecessary. Those are unnecessary. Because this is Bible thumping Deborah. Unnecessary. Jesus is on my wall. He don't need to be singing that. That's right. She's like, okay, mom. Anyway, so yeah, Tuesday, she can, you know, she told me that I had made the right decision, that um she was okay. She was ready. And I said, okay. I didn't fight her and say, when she said, I think I'm dying, she said it twice on Saturday. And I said, okay. I didn't argue with her and say, no, you're not, Mom. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just we're gonna accept it and move forward. But again, I'd already been grieving my mom for quite some time. But this grief is a little different. Way different. Because it's like the finality. It's like I already grieved a mother that I knew, but I'm now grieving her physical presence on this planet. I almost think that the first set of grief was a role role reversal for you. Absolutely. You know, but it was abrupt. Yeah. It was more abrupt than it needed, than it should have been for people that, you know, turned 60 and 70 with their mother still present. I'm still moving through things with her. You're still like in a daughter, mother-daughter relationship. Yeah, I'm still calling her. And then all divided. Yeah, and then you're her caretaker entirely. So it was a pretty acute for you. Yeah. I never had a role reversal because it just happened. It was terrible. I mean, I wanted to preserve my mother-daughter relationship with her, and I feel like that was completely removed and I became her caregiver. And to be honest, I got really upset with my parent, my dad, and my sister, because I felt like they got to preserve their relationship with her as wife, daughter, and mother and wife and husband. And here I am, caregiver Ashley. And I feel like I was robbed of not only that, but then you were and I don't blame them. They couldn't, they cannot emotionally do that. They there was no way. Right. But you were also then like this big decision maker. Yeah, and I feel like that's where I feel a lot of this grief is because it is so heavy to have made those decisions.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Um where two real life providers get real health habits, wellness, get broken health care systems. We're educating and power and energy.