My mother is gone...

My mother, Katy Wade, died at the age of 69 on Friday, August 18, 2006. Her death came after battling numerous health problems and being in and out of the hospital. That's the way my blog begins on the Daily Republic website, but I've got some more to add to the story. And I do add it in this blog. My blog.

I’ve learned that the people you love and who love you are the most important thing in the world. We get bogged down in all kinds of trivial things in our daily lives and it seems we’ve perfected the art of making mountains out of mole hills. There’s so much that we get worked up about that, in the final analysis, doesn’t mean squat.

If you’ve watched a loved one deteriorate in the hospital, then you know the hopeless, helpless feeling it generates deep inside your soul. It always seems that there are more questions than answers and the answers you do receive aren’t the ones you want.

I’d lost two loved ones suddenly and thought that losing a loved one to a lingering death would be “easier”, having had time to prepare for it. But I’ve learned that there is no easy way to say goodbye to someone you love. Heartache is heartache.

I’ve also learned that we need universal healthcare in the United States. Call it government run medicine. Call it socialized medicine or whatever you want. It’s ridiculous that in the world’s superpower, health care is a just another business commodity.

We see nothing wrong with having compulsory; taxpayer funded public education because we see the benefit of having an educated work force. It helps our economy and helps us compete in the world. What about having a healthy citizenry? What about investing in preventive medicine so we don’t pay through the wazoo later?

No patient should be denied proper health care because a hospital wants the bed for someone with better insurance.

In May, while being transported to what would have been her first dialysis session by Garcia Transportation 7516 Debutante Ln, Sacramento, CA 95828 (916) 871-3943, the driver, Patti Morgan dropped my mom out of the back of the transport van. The wheelchair ramp had not been raised and my mother tumbled 3 feet out of the back of the truck backwards, with Morgan landing on top of her. It was a horrific incident that left my mom bruised and with a subdural hematoma.

It wasn't long after that that our mom began her in and out of the hospital ordeal. My mother suffered from degraded vision and back pain. She battled an infection in her IV, pneumonia, MRSA (where visitors would have to don masks and we couldn't give her a hug or kiss), her blood sugar fluctuating out of control, suddenly not being able to swallow, having to be put on a feeding tube, having to be put on oxygen, pain not relieved by morphine, daily dialysis, not being able to speak, and dementia where she could not identify her own sons.

I'm not a doctor. Not an expert. And my mother had health problems before she was dropped but no one will be able to convince me that being dropped didn't hasten her death. And we played hell trying to find a neurologist who would examine her. In fact, she was never seen by a neurologist. One of her doctors had a phone consultation with one and that's the closest she came. Why, you ask? Because no one could find a neurologist who would take Medi-Cal. No one was going to pocket a lot of money treating my mother so she became expendable. And that shouldn't happen to anyone.

All the while my mother was in the hospital at NorthBay Medical Center, my brothers and I dealt with clueless thumb-up-their-ass doctors who seemed like they were dealing with their very first patient. Why is my mother in so much pain? I don't know. Why is her blood sugar out of control when YOU GUYS ARE THE ONES CONTROLLING WHAT SHE INGESTS??? How come she can't swallow? How come she can't talk? Why is she sleeping so much? How come she doesn't know who I am? How? What? Why? And the medical establishment gave us nothing. If you don't know, say you don't know and then go find out from someone who does! That's all I expected of them. I feel let down. I feel like my mother was let down.

Would she be in perfect health had she been seen by a neurologist and competent medical staff? No. She wasn't in perfect health to begin with. She was on a trajectory that didn't bode well. But the speed of her deterioration after the dropping incident was astounding. It was dramatic.

Why aren't these medical transport companies better regulated? Who the hell trains these people? What licensing is involved? How much experience is required? From what I've been able to tell, there's not much oversight. It's a matter of getting a van approved by the California Highway Patrol, getting a business license and woohoo, you're in the lucrative medical transport business. Some municipalities and counties are better regulated than others but there needs to be statewide, uniform oversight. Has Garcia's Transportation dropped any other patients? Who keeps those stats? How many drops does a business like this get?

I had to vent. That has been building inside me. She was a wonderful mom and her efforts were not in vain.

My mother joins her son, Ken, in the next life. She’s left behind four sons who miss her and greatly benefited from her discipline, direction, understanding and love. She did well by us. The Wade clan goes on…