I took Saturday off to try to do some projects I've been meaning to work on for months now. While I didn't get very far, I did start cleaning out some boxes of stuff I'd put away after my mom died.
They weren't even filled with her belongings — they were filled with my own stuff that I was sorting out around that time and said I'd get to later. Well, later was a few years, but who's counting? The first box was filled with a hodgepodge of items — some keepsakes, candles, Christmas lights, hair products, small flower pots, etc., but at the bottom were a couple of notebooks. I opened the first one and found it blank and set it aside, but as soon as I opened the second one, my stomach dropped.
It was a notebook I'd only read once before, and that had been enough. I hadn't wanted to get rid of it back then, but I had no desire to ever look at it again either. The irony of rediscovering it now was not lost on me.
But let me back up and add some context before we get to the contents.
For the last decade of her life, my mom had several health issues and some really bad luck. I was her sole caregiver through all of it, which means we saw our fair share of hospital visits together. Anytime she was admitted, I stayed with her overnight, whether we were there for two days or 20.
You learn that you have to be. My mom often had a bad reaction to a certain pain medication, yet the staff would try to give it to her anyway. I've walked in on them leaving her alone in a chair for hours and unable to get up by herself. I've witnessed her tell me she could fly out a window and try. I've seen nurses mix up charts and treatments and discharge instructions. I've been told my mom wanted to die (stop treatments) when she, in fact, did not and was confused about their questioning. My mom actually almost lost a leg because a nurse told her a doctor said to follow up in six weeks instead of six days once.
Patients need advocates, especially those who are sometimes unable to speak up for themselves. It's not that my mom was unable exactly, but she did get loopy on pain medication, and she saw the best in everyone and couldn't believe trained medical professionals could make so many mistakes. I was often her watchdog and her critical thought process among many, many other things.
But when the pandemic hit, I was no longer allowed to accompany her to the hospital. I had to do the best I could through phone calls. She'd often call me crying during those handful of visits she had in 2020 and 2021 because she was confused or the staff wouldn't listen to her. It was hell trying to actually get anyone on the phone, but once I did, I gave them a piece of my mind. I spent a Wednesday in November of 2020 cursing out an idiotic social worker because she'd let my mom come home unable to walk and without any kind of physical therapy.
The very last time she went into the hospital, the pandemic was, in my opinion, long over. Most of us had resumed normal life, even though the government was still pushing vaccines and new strains and narratives that "things were getting bad again" every so often. The hospital was even allowing visitors in limited numbers with reduced hours.
My mom was on dialysis at the time, and the clinic had screwed up her schedule. She missed two treatments, and they finally told me that she needed to go to the emergency room to get squared away. It wasn't the first time this had happened, so I expected her to be home within a couple of days. Only, that night — it was a Saturday — I called the hospital to check on her, and they told me to call back in half an hour, that she'd been taken to the ICU.
It took me forever to actually get in touch with anyone in the ICU, and to this day, I still don't know what happened between the ER and the ICU. During dialysis, she'd slipped into some sort of stupor — not quite a coma, but not quite fully conscious. I wanted to go up there that night, but the nurse told me it'd be best to wait until Sunday. So, the next day, my dad and I went as soon as we could. My poor mother was lying in a hospital bed whimpering but unable to speak. I told them the first problem was that they basically had her bed tilted back so far that she was upside down, and this is a woman who doesn't even like to lie flat. Plus, I said, the room was hot, and maybe they could play some music or turn on a TV so it wasn't so dead. All of this helped.
We returned on Monday, and she was a little more with it. The staff asked her if she knew who we were, and she smiled the brightest smile you can imagine and said, "Yes, my husband and daughter." We stayed with her a few hours and promised we'd return on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, I was swamped with something that I needed to get done while she was still in the hospital (my free time at that point was nearly nonexistent), so I suggested my dad go solo, and I'd take the Wednesday shift. He did, but he called me about 15 minutes later.
"What happened?" I asked.
"COVID," he replied. "They're not allowing visitors now."
As I said, this was long after the pandemic had started. It was in the middle of the summer, so it wasn't like it was sick season where everything ramps up. And all of the surrounding counties were still allowing visitors at their hospitals, even hospitals that were owned by the same company. Our local government had decided on its own to go back to draconian March 2020 protocols. No visitors allowed for the foreseeable future.
My mom was pretty lucid by this point, and she knew what was going on and why we couldn't be there. She did request that I bring her some items and drop them off at the front desk, which I did on Wednesday — a brush, her phone charger, toiletries, and things like that. She also asked for a notebook and pen, so she'd have something to do. She called to let me know she got them.
For the next I don't even know how long — maybe a week, maybe two — my ability to communicate was practically nonexistent. I could talk to my mom if her phone was charged (I finally ended up going out and buying like a 20-foot phone charger so she wouldn't have to depend on the staff to do that for her). I could talk to her nurses on occasion, but I kept getting two different, vague stories: One would say "She's doing great!" The next would say, "I'm not sure why she's not improving."
At some point, the ICU liaison and the doctor on staff wanted my dad and me to come to the hospital to talk about moving her to hospice.
"Hospice? Are you serious?" I asked. "The woman just told me she was making out a grocery list. I don't think we're at that point."
But the hospital kept hounding us, almost like they just wanted to free up the bed. They gave no explanations. They gave no alternatives. Finally, I called my mom's nephrologist. I really didn't know who else to turn to. It felt like the whole medical profession had given up on her and us. He'd been on vacation, but he called me right back when his secretary told him they were suggesting hospice. He was as surprised as we were. He told me to tell them to leave us alone until the following week when he would be the ICU doctor in charge, and he'd assess the situation himself. Thank God for that man. Eventually, he became my eyes an ears when I couldn't be there, and he was kind enough to check in with me regularly.
That day, they did let us "sneak in" and see my mom for about an hour. They wanted to see if her vital signs would improve — no one could figure out why they hadn't with treatment. She was oh so happy to see us. I'm not sure we'd ever gone that long without at least talking. She was still pretty alert, but being in that room alone for weeks had taken its toll. She was confused. Mixing things up. Didn't know what day or time it was. She was lonely. I kept reminding her why we weren't able to visit. I wanted her to know it wasn't our decision.
After our hour, the liaison came and told us we needed to leave or she was going to get in major trouble if anyone caught us there.
A few days after that, my mom took a turn mentally and physically. She was practically delirious and asking for us, so they let us "sneak in" for another 45 minutes or so to see if we could perk her up. I didn't understand why they'd let us in for small periods of time that required walking through half of the hospital but not just let me stay there in her room. Apparently, COVID only spreads in increments of 45 minutes or an hour. Trust the science.
She did perk up while we were there, and her vital signs even improved, but when they rushed us out after those 45 minutes, she began crying, "Why? Why? Why?" It was all downhill from there. That evening they said they went into her room and found her unresponsive and had to put her on a ventilator.
Long story a little shorter, my mom died about a week after that. It was her choice. She was tired of being in that hospital room alone and wanted to go home. I think in her mind she thought that if they'd just let her go, she could return to her house and go back to her normal life. That if she could be with her family and sit in her chair and eat (they wouldn't let her eat the entire time she was there) and do normal things, she'd be okay... So, she gave them permission to stop any treatments that were keeping her alive.
But she left behind the notebook from hell. The pages tell a story that make me so sick to my stomach.
It starts out normal enough. A half-finished grocery list. A few doodles. Writing her name in pretty cursive and other things we do when we are bored. But as you flip through, the tone changes, and the handwriting becomes less legible.
"What day is it?" she writes.
"Water please???????" (They weren't letting her eat or have water, and I know that was rough because she suffered from major dry mouth.)
"Ice?"
"Help me please."
"Pain!"
"Want to go home."
All of this is written out over and over, as if no one is listening to her.
While Anthony Fauci was fawning all over himself and writing about all the celebrities he got to meet in his journal, my mother was begging for basic human dignity in hers because of this man.
She spent weeks in that hospital alone, deteriorating, wondering why the two most important people in her life were suddenly just gone. She couldn't communicate. I know for a fact that many of her nurses didn't always respond to her requests. They were focused on the COVID patients and had already written her off as "should be in hospice," as far as I'm concerned.
I never thought I’d share this, but given that I’ve had to hear all about Fauci’s diary lately, I will. My mom spent weeks alone in the ICU due to his policies. She did not have COVID. We were well over 1.5 years into the pandemic.
— SarahDownSouth (@SarahDownSouth) August 4, 2026
Still, she was not allowed to have her family… pic.twitter.com/xBjJSM00Gp
I'm not sure Fauci will ever pay for what he did to us, but I have no problem with anything he has coming to him, even if it's simply rotting in hell.
