In 2010, my mom was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. Over the next eleven years, she'd lose her mobility, her organs would fail, and she'd end up on dialysis and oxygen. Throw in a couple of freak accidents in between everything else, that led to issues including broken bones and a deep leg wound that required many surgeries, and you could say she became pretty familiar with doctors' offices and hospitals.
I was with her every step of the way. I'm an only child, my dad worked long hours, and we didn't have much outside help, so she came to depend on me more and more each year for her care. It wasn't easy, especially in the last year or two. I did more caregiving and cheerleading than I knew I had in me.
Those five or six years that she was on dialysis were especially hard. I got up at 5 a.m. three days a week, drove her to the clinic, and picked her up a few hours later. She tried a home dialysis program for a while, but after a month or two of nonstop problems, we gave up on it. There were surgeries for new ports and fistulas, hospital stays tor this and that, and blood transfusions for chronic anemia.
The absolute worst part of it was how her mental health declined. I can handle all the blood and gore you can throw at me, but watching my mom cry because she didn't want to go back to dialysis the next day or was dreading yet another hospital stay was the worst. I developed an arsenal of ways to cheer her up. Sometimes they worked; sometimes they didn't. But oh, how I tried. When all else failed, I just sat by her side, which seemed to bring her comfort. Until I couldn't.
From the time all of this started, I made sure my mom didn't spend a night in the hospital without me. The doctors and nurses at our local hospital got to know me because every time my mom was admitted, I'd come rolling in behind her with my laptop and my little red suitcase. I've slept in some of the most uncomfortable positions imaginable. I estimate that between 2015 and 2020, we spent four to five months total in the hospital. And it's a good thing I was with her, because I can't tell you how many times I caught nurses giving her wrong medications or doctors misunderstanding something she told them, especially when she was high as a kite on pain medication.
In July 2021, my mom started to decline. She missed a few dialysis treatments for various reasons beyond our control and ended up in the hospital for what we thought was a routine trip to get caught up. I was planning to go up there that evening after her treatment, but when I called to get her room number, they told me she was heading to the ICU and that I should wait. The next day, my dad and I went to visit, but she had slipped into some sort of stupor. The ICU staff suggested we just let her rest and she'd have another dialysis treatment the next day that might help. To be honest, I was exhausted and welcomed a night or two at home without having to do any type of caregiving.
But on day three, my dad went to visit and called me fifteen minutes later, saying they wouldn't let him inside the hospital. COVID was apparently resurging a little bit, almost a year and a half after the pandemic began. I was annoyed, but again, I figured she'd be home in a few days, and welcomed the reprieve. Only that wasn't the case. She was in much worse shape than anyone knew. The worst part is that she'd finally regained full consciousness and was asking for us.
A few days later, the ICU staff told my dad and me that they were going to "sneak us in" for an hour to see if her vital signs improved. It seemed to help. For the next two weeks, she was fairly upbeat anytime I was able to talk to her on the phone, but she was a little confused as to what was happening and why they were keeping her so long. She began mixing up her days and nights. She was lonely, and it was taking a mental toll. I had to ask her regularly if she understood why we weren't allowed to visit. "COVID," she would reply, before asking if I thought we had enough supplies on hand in case things got bad again when she came home.
About two and half weeks after she'd been admitted, they called us and told us she was not doing well and we could "sneak in" yet again. She perked up a little bit while we were there and her vitals improved, but after about 45 minutes, we were told rather sternly that we had to leave because they were afraid someone would catch us, and the hospital would get in trouble. As we were rushed out the door, my mom got upset and started crying, "Why? Why? Why?" It was heartbreaking.
Later that evening, they'd gone into her room and found her unresponsive, and had to put her on a ventilator for a few days. After that, I could no longer communicate with her, and trying to get actual information from anyone at the hospital was impossible. When I did get in touch with someone, one nurse would tell me one thing, while another told me something different. It was a nightmare. Thank God, I befriended one of my mom's doctors who thought the world of her, and he was able to give me a little bit of an idea of what was going on, but it still wasn't enough. My mom was dying, and she was all by herself. It was barbaric.
A little over three weeks after my mom was admitted into the hospital, she decided she didn't want any more treatments. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be with her family. ("I know I get on your nerves, but I miss you," she told me during our last good phone conversation.) She was done. My dad and I rushed up there to try talk her out of it, but I saw pretty quickly that we'd reached the end. She'd given up. And in that moment, after over a decade of trying my best to keep my mom alive, healthy, and happy, I had to give up, too. They disconnected all the tubes and wires and monitors, and within a few hours, she was dead.
She basically spent her final weeks alone, unable to see me or my dad. I wasn't able to be there to make sure she received the best care. I wasn't able to comfort her when she was terrified, when she learned she might be dying. I wasn't there to cheer her up when she got sad. I wasn't there to talk to her when she got lonely. I wasn't there to adjust her bed to the right position or turn on her music or read her all the "happy birthday" texts she received on her special day or help her find a way to deal with her chronic dry mouth that I knew bothered her so much. She had a notebook with her, and when I looked at it after she died, I saw where she wrote "water please" so many times that it made me sick because I knew they weren't giving it to her, and I haven't opened it again since.
While I thought all of this was some kind of overbearing toxic corporate policy, it turns out that not allowing visitors was not a hospital decision at all. Branches of the very same hospital system in neighboring counties were allowing up to two visitors to stay with sick patients at a time. But the very liberal Democrat leadership in my county had decided they weren't going to allow anyone to see their hospitalized loved ones because of a stupid virus that we'd already been dealing with for over a year and a half.
And this is why I'm sick of the hypocrisy from Democrats who scream about "separating families" at the border. If they truly cared about separating families, my mom and many other people's loved ones wouldn't have died alone in 2021. Toddlers wouldn't be crossing the border into the United States alone. Venezuelan gang members wouldn't be "caught and released," only to rape children and murder someone's daughter. If Democrats truly cared about families, they'd realize that a secure border is very pro-family, because it can help prevent issues such as human trafficking, and it keeps the families already in our country and other parts of North America safe. They'd focus on making legal immigration more obtainable, so families who want to come here and contribute to society rather than commit crimes can do so.
But Democrats don't care about your family, or mine or anyone else's. They just want more constituents. They just want more people they can control. And they can't seem to win them over the old-fashioned way anymore, so this is what they resort to.
