Carolyn Stevens Funeral Expenses

Hello, my name is Baron Stevens.  My mother Carolyn Stevens is not doing very well.  In fact she faces her last moments in life.  If you did not know my mother well, let me give you the cliff notes.

When I was 13 years old, my father died of colon cancer.  Ever since then, my mother had tried her best to raise me, even though when my father died she was already disabled due to a back injury.  My high school years were very rough, but I can honostly say that she tried her very best.  We may have gotten into a lot of arguments in the past, but I am very grateful for having her.

As time went on, her health condition worsened.  She already had a history of high blood pressure, COPD,  neck and back pain but soon in about 2014 or 2015 she had an aneurysm in her aorta by the aretry going to the kidneys.  They told us that Mom basically had a 50/50 chance of survival.  Before going into the surgery, Mom prayed and she came out of it alive.  However the end result of the surgery killed her kidneys.  We made the decision to start hemodialysis.

Hemodialysis is a death sentence for some, but hope for others.  We took it as a glimmer of hope.  Now Mom could maybe last a few more years.  Hope and time is all that we had wished for, but due to this new diagnosis she was not able to get life insurance.  As time progressed, she went from walking, to using a walker, and for the last year or so she has been completely wheelchair bound.  During this time period, she has survived a stint in one of her heart valvues, countless surgeries on her arm creating and fixing a fistulagram, having part of her small intestine removed, and many other procedures.  

I made it a point to try and make my mother's life as convenient as possible.  We would go on trips that we couldn't really afford but Mom wanted to go, so I made bills and such work.  If she wanted Grandy's food and I had the money in my bank account, my wife and I would go get it for her.  When she wanted the more expensive diapers because they felts more comfortable, I bought them.  When she would make a mess and poop herself, she would cry and tell me that she was sorry but I cleaned her up and helped her back into her recliner.  The last few years of my life has been dedicated to making her last few years as easy as I could make them.  Most of the money I made went towards her medication, the food she wanted, her basic amenities, even down to the cable package she wanted.

Fast forward to Saturday, September 2,  We had planned a trip to St Louis.  Mom was in the hospital due to accidentally skipping dialisys on Wednesday but St Vincent released her.  Her feet were super swollen, however we decided to brush it off and assume she just needed to do dialysis on Monday.  As the day went on, we drove down to St Louis and noticed that her legs were wet.  After going to the zoo, we saw that her feet started gushing what looked to be water.  We just assumed this was water weight and brushed it off as something weird going on.  We got back into town on Sunday and her feet was starting to blister.  She went to dialysis bother Monday and Wednesday, but her feet was getting worse.  My wife had been trying to get some doctors to look at her feet, but no one knew what was going on.  We got a referral for a wound care doctor on Thursday.  Friday comes around and her feet hurt so bad that the pain in unbearable.  We took her to the hospital and just assumed she needed antibiotics.  

Now the date is Saturday, September 9.  I get a call from the hospital saying the physician needs to see me.  My mother's vitals are dropping and it was time for me to use my power of attorney.  My wife and I drove down to the hospital and my mother was in ICU, twitching in pain.  The doctor came in and told me that we had to make a deicision.  My mother had one dead leg, and the other was basically the same.  The only way to survive this was to do an amputation.  However, the likelyhood of her surviving the amputation was pretty much nonexistent.  If I had chose to do the procedure, I would basically be killing my mother.  The other option was to let her go.  Just let her take as much pain medication as needed to get the pain to go away.  She was already getting the highest dosage of morphine and that was not even touching the pain.  They wanted to give her the highest dosage of dilaudid, but doing so would lower her blood pressure which was already  60/25.  The doctor told me that they had no clue how she had survived and lasted this long.  He had been her hospitalist for several years now and she had basically survived all odds.  We decided to let her go, and they are making her as comfortable as can be.

I know that we should had tried putting back as much money as possible for funeral expenses throughout the years.  I was not thinking about that though.  I just wanted to make Mom as happy as I could and repay her for taking care of me when Dad, the main money maker in our house, had died.  I loved my mother very much and I am just asking for whatever anyone can donate.  Even just a dollar can help get my mother taken care of in the end.