2010 February | A Mama's Blog

Update on My Mom

February 26, 2010 By A Mama's Blog 5 Comments

Thanks for all the comments and e-mails regarding my mother. She passed away peacefully early Wednesday morning, and we were with her.

Needless to say, this is a very difficult time and the range of emotions are many. Losing my mother has been devastating, but there have been many positive experiences during the last week, and such an outpouring of love for my mom. It has been a great comfort to our family.

As we leave the city my mom lived and return home this weekend, our lives have changed. The person who has always been there for us- is gone. We have to find that place where we can move on with our lives, not consumed by grief, but with the happiness and love she has always given to us.

On Thursday morning my siblings and I all woke up at the exact same time in our hotel room because the sun was streaming in the room and was reflecting off a mirror. The light was very bright and intense. It was shinning in our faces, and it was odd how bright the room was. My brother closed the curtain, and I looked at the clock. It was the exact time my mom passed away, 24 hours earlier. I think she was telling us she was okay, and we are going to be okay too.

My friend told me that my mom will always be with me- I will just have to look for her. Maybe that’s part of how you get through something like this and live with the loss every day. Maybe our loved ones are never really gone, but the way they express their love, and their presence in our lives changes.

Filed Under: Family & Friends, losing a parent

Saying Good-Bye to My Mom

February 20, 2010 By A Mama's Blog 23 Comments

On Monday afternoon, my siblings and I found out that my mom was in the intensive care unit, in serious condition in Minnesota. We were told her condition was worsening, so my sister Mara and I decided to go to Minnesota. We arrived on Wednesday.

Three days later, I’m sitting next to my mom in her hospital room while she sleeps, writing this. My mom is dying and is not going to recover. The only option available would extend her life by a maximum of 3 months, and she would be in the hospital, connected to machines. Yesterday my Aunt Laura (who is a nurse), Mara, my mom and myself talked. My mom knows her condition but how do you just decide you are done? How do you tell your children that you want to die? Laura says it is very rare when someone can make that decision-fully conscious and aware like my mom is- she said it is normally just too difficult.

Laura and my mom have been friends (not just sister-in-laws) for over 30 years. Laura said the words that we could not- she spoke aloud what needed to be said, but we couldn’t say, “…you aren’t going to get better, and you are going to die.”

After that Mara and I talked to my mom. She was considering the alternative option that would give her a few more weeks, but would only be delaying the inevitable. I don’t think anything has ever been as hard, as the conversation that followed that Mara and I had with my mom.

A bit later her doctor returned to tell her he could set up the treatment, and my mom, in a strong voice told him no. She told him in the days she had left, she didn’t want to be on machines, with tubes in her body. She wanted to be comfortable and pain free, surrounded by her family. Her doctor agreed this was the best option, and she had made a wise decision.

This afternoon my mom’s wishes will be carried out, and she is moving to a highly recommended hospice. We will be with her in the hospice. They will allow us to bring her two cats in to visit my mom. They will cook anything she likes, and she will be pain free, and comfortable.

The last few days have been mainly a blur. I am so emotionally and mentally drained- I’m just in hospital mode. My sister and I feel like we have been here for months- not days. We knew “one day” this would happen, but I don’t think you can ever be prepared for this.

All of my mom’s friends, and co-workers have been by to see her, and they are amazing. They have told us how much they adore my mom, and what a wonderful and loving person she is. They have brought my family much comfort and their kindness has touched us all.

Our family and friends have been so wonderful as well- they step in when we can’t. I honestly don’t know what we would have done if Laura hadn’t come. We didn’t ask her- she just booked a ticket and came. My sister-in-law, Kat, is taking care of us. She makes sure we eat, she drives us where we need to go (directions are not Mara and I’s strong point), and she makes my mom laugh. Our friends back home have sent fruit baskets, flowers, directions when we are lost, advice, and support. One friend is coming in tonight to help Mara and I in these final days, when Laura has to go home. My mom’s hospital roommate has bonded with our family, and she has said our mom is her hero. Old friends of my mom that we haven’t heard from in years are calling and offering their support. My mom has commented so many times in the last few days that she never knew so many people cared about her. We are all so grateful for all of the love, support, and help all our family and friends have shown our family.

My mom has a few days left to live, and this time with her is precious and a gift. We have had many good moments and conversations already. She has talked to her grandchildren on the phone, and has been able to hear their voices one last time.

We only get one chance to do this. While the emotions are extremely difficult, I feel it will be a true blessing to be with my mom when the time comes for her to pass away. I am very grateful I get this final block of time to love my mom, and say good-bye.

Filed Under: Activities, Family & Friends, Health, losing a parent, Mothering

Valentine’s Day 5K- A Matter of Time

February 15, 2010 By A Mama's Blog Leave a Comment

On Sunday I ran in the Run Denver Valentine’s Day 5K Race. After the hills in the last 5K race in January left me struggling at the end of the race, I have been working on more strength training, running longer distances, and more hill running.

On Thursday during my training run, I ran the distance just under 29 minutes. This was the fastest pre-race time I have had, and felt pretty confident I could run faster than that on Sunday, and get my personal best. Later I saw the weather report for Sunday. It called for snow and temperatures in the 20′s. Running in the colder weather doesn’t bother me too much. I dress in layers, and usually end up shedding some of them. But the snow gets packed down, and turns to ice. It makes it harder to run as fast.

I also tried to figure out a definite plan on how fast I needed to run to hit my target time. When I ran my best time, I started out at a faster pace and was able to maintain it. But since I have been running longer distances, I have noticed if I start out slower, I get an incredible surge of energy after about 2.5 miles. After the last race, I did not want to be so tired at the end! I was debating between a negative split, and running a steady, faster pace. My friend gave me a good idea to break out the times on how fast I needed to run each mile to reach my target time. I liked that, because it gave me a definite goal to hit for each mile.

On Sunday morning it was snowing and cold. When I got to the race, it was still snowing, and it was 18 degrees out! The path was shoveled, but there was a lot of ice pack, because the park is a really popular park for running. This race was a bit different for me too, because no one came with me. My dad had a cold, and I didn’t have the heart to ask anyone else to get out of bed on a cold, snowy, Sunday, Valentine’s Day morning to come stand in snowy, 18 degree weather!

Since I didn’t have my trusty equipment manager to hold all my stuff, I jogged back to my car to put my registration stuff away, and by the time I got back to the start line, it was time to line up. I hadn’t stretched, and since the race had a timer chip, I figured I would stay back for a few minutes and finish warming up. The previous races with timing chips start when you cross the start line. There were probably about 25 other people who had the same idea as I.

It was nice to start after the majority of the runners had gone. I hit the ”start” on the timer on my watch as soon as I crossed the start line. It was much less cramped. I was shooting for a 10 minute mile for the first mile and a few minutes into it, I knew it was going to be hard to get my time. The course was really icy. When my feet landed, they slipped. I had forgotten to bring my YakTraxs, which are awesome on the ice.

The end of the first mile wasn’t marked, so I wasn’t exactly sure when I finished the first mile. I was passing a lot of people, and I was enjoying running. I felt like I was running pretty well, despite the ice. There were patches where it was just wet pavement, so I tried to maneuver to these as much as I could.

I saw the sign marking the end of two miles and my watch said 19 minutes. I didn’t bother looking at the seconds, but I was happy with the pacing. I focused on my breathing and trying to keep an even pace, so I wouldn’t tire out too much at the end. It was getting a bit more difficult to get deeper breaths though because of the cold. I kept passing people, and since I started after everyone else, there wasn’t anyone that was passing me. That was kind of a neat psychological edge.

I saw the marker for mile 3, and my time was just under 25 minutes. I figured I was in good shape- I had just run a 5 minute mile! I had never run a mile that fast. But the end of the course was a hill- not a steep one, and I was doing okay, but I was getting tired. I wasn’t able to get any deep breaths, so my breathing was very shallow. I was trying to pass someone a few steps ahead of me, and saw the finish line in sight. If I gave it my all to pass, I probably wasn’t going to have enough left to finish. So I didn’t sprint to the finish. I held my pace, and made it to the finish line!

I wasn’t as tired as I was at the end of the last race, and felt much better. I stood for several seconds and breathed. I went over the volunteer to have her remove the timing chip off my shoe, and remembered I hadn’t checked my watch! I looked at it and it said 28:48. I had waited about 30 seconds before I stopped it, but wasn’t worried about it, since the timing chip kept track of that. I figured my time would be just over 28 minutes. While that wasn’t my personal best, I felt great considering the weather and the course conditions. I wanted to also finish in the top 15% for my age group, and I had a good feeling I did.

Later in the afternoon the results were posted online and I was shocked to see my “official” time was 31:18! I thought it was a mistake. I hadn’t cleared the time from my watch and looked at it again, and it showed 28:48. I e-mailed the time keeper for the race and asked him how I could have an almost 3 minute discrepancy. The official results placed me 13th in my age group out of 58 runners and 149th out of 311.

I was not happy with that at all! The only race I ran slower than that was my very first race. Even when I struggled at the last race, my time was 31:00 and I know I didn’t struggle as much during this race. I haven’t run a 5K distance over 30 minutes in over a month. I just knew the results weren’t right, and it was frustrating! I talked to my friend and also posted what happened on my Daily Mile account, and it made me feel a bit better to hear that sometimes the results get messed up. But I was disappointed.

I thought about it clearly, and realized I didn’t need an “official” result to tell me how I ran. I knew from the way I felt (and my watch), that I really ran the race in the 28 minute range- not in the 31 minute range. While I won’t have an “official” result, it doesn’t discount my running. Even with the weather and the ice, this was the second best time I’ve ever had. It felt great to achieve that.

Shortly after this, the time keeper e-mailed me back, and said the chips didn’t record individual start times- they all turned on at the same time. He even asked if I started later than the main crowd. Since I did, that explained the discrepancy. I figured I started about 3 minutes after everyone else, so that would have put my time right about at 28:18- just about what I thought it would be at when I finished, and what my watch showed.

I’m glad I got resolution on why the time was off, and it was a good lesson for me to learn. You can’t always rely on what a clock or a timer chip says you have done. They are devices, and even I didn’t stop my watch the exact moment I was done. But I still knew I didn’t run a 31 minute race. When I looked at how the 28:18 time lined up, it would have “officially” put me in 7th place for my age group, and 87th overall. It also put me in the 12% for my age group, so I met that goal!

I’ve joked that I have “graduated” to the next level- the 7K race, which I will be running in next month, but I’m not done with 5K’s. I am going to run in a fifth 5K and try to “officially” beat my personal best.

After this timing fiasco, and always trying to “guesstimate” my distances, I have a very cool announcement to make soon, which will be perfect timing. :-)

Filed Under: Family & Friends, Holidays, Running Tagged With: Denver Valentine's Day 5K race, Running, timed race results wrong

I’m a Pigsty Expert

February 9, 2010 By A Mama's Blog 5 Comments

I’ve been working with Ryan and Cole for a few weeks now, on cleaning up their playroom, and organizing everything. It is amazing at times how two boys can be so messy. We started with the bookcase. I took out every single book- all 500 of them (so it seems) and kept the ones that are age appropriate, and packed up the baby ones.

Then we started in on the cars, trucks, trains, and anything else with four wheels. Then I started finding tire treads everywhere. Evidently, Cole likes to take the tread off, and then throw all of them behind larger objects in the playroom.

Every toy has many other little parts, and trying to find all the parts to the toys to put them away is taking so long. Cole has been practicing cutting with scissors. There are always scraps of paper everywhere that makes the floor look like Times Square after New Year’s. Add to that, Ryan now uses the playroom as his “classroom” to play school. Everytime I pick up a marker, or put a book away, he tells me he needs that- those are his teaching materials. He really does have a class too. He’s recruited the neighborhood children, and after they are all home from real school, they are now assembling in our playroom to play school.

The room is a wreck, and on Friday I finally had some more time to work with the boys and I was determined we were finally going to get the playroom clean and organized. All was going well until five minutes into it, when I discovered “spit balls” all over the place. When I asked what they were, Ryan said that was his science experiment- he was making paper.

I told the boys that there was to be no more water in the playroom. Then I uttered those five words- those five words I heard growing up: “This room is a pigsty!” The boys looked at me. The rest of the interaction went like this:

COLE: Mommy, what is a pigsty?

ME: A pigsty is where pigs live, and it is dirty, messy, and gross. Just like this room.

COLE: But we aren’t pigs- we are boys.

ME: But your room looks like where pigs live.

RYAN: Pigs live on the farm, in mud. There’s no mud in here.

ME: Yes, but their sty is where they live on the farm, and there probably is mud in here- we just haven’t found it yet.

RYAN: When did you see a pigsty?

ME: I see a pigsty every time I walk in this room.

RYAN: Pigs like to be dirty.

COLE: Yea, pigs like to be dirty, and we like our playroom.

ME: Well I don’t, and we aren’t going to keep this room like a pigsty anymore. We are going to clean it up, until we are done.

RYAN and COLE (silence and then): OINK, OINK!

On Saturday we worked all day, and we made a lot of progress. After the second trash bag was filled, I realized I am a full-fledged pigsty expert. And I remembered this: (watch at the 3 minute mark to 4 minutes)

Clearly, I’m following the universally-accepted-standard-mother sayings. When we start in on the pigsty room again, I”ll just have to step it up a notch and tell the boys, “if you think this room is going to stay a pigsty, you have another thing coming.”

I am sure the response will be the same: oinks, and they will probably ask what is the other thing coming is.

Filed Under: Cole, Household, Mothering, Pregnancy & Birth, Ryan Tagged With: Bill Cosby mothers, Bill Cosby pigsty authority, Bill Cosby you have another thing coming, cleaning up room

Maternal Death Rates Rise- C-Sections Now Considered a Factor

February 5, 2010 By A Mama's Blog 8 Comments

On February 2, 2010 California Watch, published a story about California’s maternal mortality rate. It reported the maternal mortality rate in California had increased from 4.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 1996 to 16.9 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006 (the last year statistics are available).

The article cites some factors that are thought to be contributing to this upward trend, and it was not a surprise to me to read that C-sections, and repeat C-sections are one of the main factors officials are finally now considering for the increase in deaths. The article points out that C-sections are now the number one surgical procedure performed in the United States.

How can California, have such a high maternity mortality rate? One would think, after the way modern medicine is used in birth today, that the opposite would be true. This trend is actually not just being seen in California- the entire US maternity mortality rate has also been increasing to the point that it is worse than in some developing countries. As of 2007, the United States ranked 41st in maternity mortality out of 171 countries.

Officials are now conceding that the increasing C-section rate, might have something to do with the maternal mortality death rate. As the California Watch article points out, “doctors face a condition called placenta accreta, where the placenta grows into the scar left by a previous C-section. In surgery, doctors must find and suture a web of twisted placental vessels snaking into the patient’s abdomen, which can hemorrhage alarming amounts of blood. Often, doctors must remove the uterus.”

Along these lines, while researching this blog post, I came across an interesting report from The Joint Commission dated January 10, 2010 on preventing maternal death. It cited a study by the CDC which listed the six leading causes of maternal deaths between 1991 and 1997. The second leading cause was was hemorrhaging, causing 17% of the deaths. The fourth cause was infection at 13%. The report goes on to identify and cites two out of the four common preventable errors that lead to death were: failure to pay attention to vital signs following a C- section, and hemorrhaging following a C-section.

It is interesting that a leading cause of maternal death is hemorrhaging, and one of the most common errors that leads to death is hemorrhaging after a C-section. The CDC reported on these findings thirteen years ago, and officials are just now seriously considering there could be a link between C-sections and a significant rise in the maternal death rate? It doesn’t seem like this has been a hidden fact, or that the research wasn’t being done. This seems more like a case where statistics and research has been emerging for years, but has been largely ignored or brushed off by medical officials. Until now. When California’s maternal death rate is worse than some countries like Bosnia or South Korea.

I have my own theory that the higher a state’s C-section rate is, the higher the maternal death rate will be. While the CDC reports on the C-section rate for every state, not every state publishes their maternal death rates. I could only come up with an handful of state statistics for 2006 on maternal death rates. It’s not enough to draw a definite conclusion. But consider that Pennsylvania had 19 maternal deaths and their C-section rate was 29.7 percent. Washington had 20 maternal deaths and their C-section rate was 28.4 percent. Compare that to California who had 95 maternal deaths and a 31.3 percent C-section rate, and Texas, who had 90 maternal deaths with a 33.2 percent C-section rate.

It’s no secret that other countries who have lower C-section rates also have lower maternal death rates. In Ireland for instance, the C-section rate averages around 21 percent. A joint UN/WHO report in 2007 found that Ireland also had the lowest maternal death rate in the world for women dying during or after pregnancy. Only one out of 47,600 women died, compared with one in 4,800 in the United States. The C-section rate in the United States in 2006 was 31.1 percent. It has been projected (but not confirmed yet) that the C-section rate in the US for 2007 will be 31.8 percent.

The California Watch article tells of a medical director in California, Dr. David Lagrew, who in 2002, banned elective inductions at his facility before 41 weeks or pregnancy, except in rare incidents. Inductions more than double the chances of C-sections. The article says, “as a result, Lagrew said, the operating room schedules opened up, and the hospital saw fewer babies admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit, fewer hemorrhages and fewer hysterectomies.” (bold print mine)

This should have been great news, but as expected, the hospital lost money. On average a C-section costs twice as much as a vaginal birth. Yet, we are constantly told that revenue has nothing to do with the increasing C-section rates. It is because the C-section is “medically necessary.”

If Dr. Lagrew was able to decrease “medically necessary” C-sections in California, right when the maternal death rate was increasing, it ought to be done elsewhere. If Ireland can have the lowest maternal death rate in the world, despite not having all the technological advances that the United States has, and has a considerably lower C-section rate than the United States, that should tell all the officials out there who are trying to figure out why the maternal death rates are increasing, that C-sections are a significant factor in maternal death rates.

It is the white elephant the medical community, and hospitals in general won’t admit, despite research pointing them in this direction for years-decades in some instances. And yet, the C-section rate continues to climb, and more women are dying during pregnancy and childbirth.

I looked up the modern version of the Hippocartic Oath that doctors take upon graduation. After reading these, it is hard to be convinced that most doctors have these oaths in mind in regards to C-sections and births in the United States:

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,…”

and the last one:

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

Maybe it is as simple as that. Maybe if more doctors and hospitals realized a woman’s body is capable in most cases of giving birth without surgery, and let their bodies do what they are capable of doing-just like Dr. Lagrew did, maternal mortality rates would drop in our country. Maybe when ”Big Business” gets out of the birthing process, C-section rates will decline, improving maternal health.

The answers to solving the increasing maternal death rate are out there, and have been for years. The question that demands an answer is, when will the majority of the medical community stop ignoring the answers?