Margie Wakefield

In March of 2023, my mother, Margie, started having some unusual health complications. She had gone to the doctors thinking it was just a case of bronchitis coming back again and again. In May 2023, she went in for a chest x ray and found an egg sized mass in her chest. She assured me and my sister it was a cyst, non cancerous and treatable. With my aunt passing away less than 2 years ago from cancer, I was scared beyond my mind. I kept thinking- I am 22 years old. I need my mom. My sister needs my mom, my sisters kids need my mom. I was scared my biggest fear of losing my mom was going to come true.

On June 5th, 2023, I took my mom to St Josephs Hospital in Stockton, CA, to get a biopsy to determine what the cyst was and how to treat it. After surgery, my mother was unexpectedly and immediately moved to the ICU for heart and breathing complications.

On the same day, June 5th, 2023, I found out my mom had small cell lung cancer, the same cancer my aunt had passed away from. Not only did she have cancer, the mass had grown from the size of an egg to 15 centimeters in less than a month. It was pressing against her heart, causing her heart to go into atrial fibrillation with irregular heartbeats, and against her esophagus, making it nearly impossible to breathe, eat, or speak. Two days later, she received 3 heavy doses of chemotherapy while hospitalized in ICU.

After 6 days at St Josephs ICU, the doctors determined she would not be able to breathe properly until a stent was placed in her windpipe to allow air flow. She was transferred 3 hours away to a different hospital, where she had emergency surgery to place a stent inside of her. This was the surgery she ended up having twice because of complications. After over two weeks of hospitalization, she was allowed home.

My mom, one month prior, had moved closer to me. She had just moved into a mobile home I helped renovate for her, picking up hours at work to try to make ends meet and help my mom. She lived there for less than a month before we found out she had cancer. Watching her be on oxygen and regaining her strength to walk independently again wasn’t what I was expecting all those days I had spent painting her house thinking of all the new adventures to come in her new home. Instead, we were doing multiple breathing treatments a day, constant 24/7 caregiving, and her not being able to breathe without oxygen tanks. We were to start radiation at the hospital two weeks after she returned home. The plan was 30 radiation treatments, 1 treatment a day for 5 days a week, which meant almost 2 full months of driving over an hour away every day for radiation.

To make my moms recovery possible and the only way I was able to get her to the treatment she required over an hour away, 5 days a week, for two months, was to quit my job. I had worked at my job for 5 years, saving up money because I grew up poor, so I always kept my money for emergency. I figured I can use what little I had saved up to be able to support myself and pay my bills at home, all while supporting my also newly unemployed mom with a new cancer diagnosis. That money did not last very long, as the two months of radiation treatment quickly turned longer as she got sick and complications from radiation therapy and the cancer. I also moved in with her full time, as some days she could barely get out of bed herself. I helped her do everything. I grocery shopped, did her laundry, cleaned her house, took her to appointments, cooked every meal, got up every odd hour in the middle of the night, even if I just heard her cough. My entire life flipped upside down. All I could think about was my mom.

We started going to radiation everyday. Everyday was the same routine. Wake up, give mom breakfast, give medication, get dressed, put oxygen tanks in car, put mom in car, drive an hour to hospital, put mom in wheelchair, push her into radiation, load mom back in, drive an hour back, unload car, give mom lunch, nap time, dinner time, and sit in the porch together or play games until she goes to sleep. Over the weeks of radiation, I had grown an even stronger bond with my mom than I had even thought was possible. I felt like as long as I was around my mom and she was around me, we were both invincible. My mom was beating the odds, the doctors were wrong, we had our whole future ahead of us. Around the last two weeks of radiation, she was starting to get weaker. Then what was supposed to be her last week of radiation, she got too sick to get out of bed. She was hospitalized again for radiation poisoning, and was stuck in the hospital again for another 4 days.

After my mom got too sick to continue radiation, we were unsure what this meant for her recovery. We went into the hospital to meet with her cancer doctor, Dr Singh, and in mid-August was when we found out her tumor had shrunk from 15 centimeters to 4. This was one of the happiest days of our lives. Her cancer was extremely responsive to chemotherapy and radiation. We both cried together, feeling so hopeful and excited for her new future. 2 more rounds of chemotherapy and she would be cancer free. The end of the journey was at arms reach, and my mom was within fingertip reach. It felt unreal, my mom was so strong, she was going to beat cancer at 67 years old. Her remission date to set right before her birthday.

Then she caught a bacterial infection from her stay in the hospital. She was medicated 4x a day for two weeks with antibiotics that tore her stomach apart and sent her into a depression, too in pain to get out of bed when I knew something wasn’t okay. I talked to her doctor, and she stopped taking the medication. The symptoms of the infection had gone away. We thought she was okay. The cancer doctors told us she was okay. We felt hopeful again, grateful she was feeling good again.

From that day forward, my mom was getting better and stronger everyday. She was able to get up and get herself water. She was making advancements like using her walker instead of me pushing her in the wheelchair, and then eventually she was able to just use her cane. We were playing board games together, taking drives, having such nice memories and such a beautiful everyday routine. She had 1/2 of her final rounds of chemotherapy. The following week, I took her to Apple Hill for her first time in over 20 years to celebrate her feeling good.

Three days later, she woke up unable to move her legs and feeling so weak she thought she was going to pass out. I called 911, freaking out, confused what was happening. The ambulance came, and the firefighters had to carry her out of the house. She was taken to the hospital, while I waited in the room of the ER, not understanding why they wouldn’t let me back to see her. After over an hour of waiting, I was let into the emergency room with her.

She was hooked up to so many wires, underneath a heating blanket connected to a machine trying to raise her body temperature. I was told my mom had gone into septic shock from the bacterial infection we were told was gone, and was told the doctors weren’t sure what would happen in the next 24-48 hours. My life started to spin upside down, none of this made sense, but I still felt as long as I was in the room with her, she would be okay. She had beats the odds before, she can do it again. The world knew I needed my mom, so many people needed my mom, I knew she would be okay.

She was immediately transferred again to the ICU, with 5 antibiotics in IV’s, as well multiple other medications for her abnormal heartbeat, low blood pressure, and infections. I stayed with her the entire day, an hour past visiting hours (until the nurse warned me security would be coming through soon, so I left.)

Before I left, I told my mom was I would see her in the morning, and to try to get better. She smiled at me and told me she would, just because she loves me so much. That was the last thing we ever said to each other. This was the night of September 28, 2023.

The next morning, 5:30 am, September 29, my mom had a stroke in her sleep from a blood clot in her brain. I found this out when I called the hospital at 6am, 30 minutes after the stroke happened, 2 hours before visiting hours started. I called because I wanted to see if I could come see her earlier. They told me my mom had a stroke, and to come down right away. I was at the hospital within minutes.

As soon as I got to the hospital and I saw my mom, I knew she was gone. She couldn’t speak, or move the left half of her body. Her eyes were pinned open wide, terrified and empty. She didn’t even look like my mom anymore. I went into the hallway and called my sister and my cousin (who she raised, who is like our brother). They were there within an hour. We sat in the room with my mom, waiting for a neurologist to come and speak with us about the severity of the damage of her brain, and if she was expected to survive. We were told she would only be able to live connected to a machine, with permanent brain damage and almost no recovery.

We were given the decision to put a breathing tube in her because she was losing the ability to breathe on her own, or let her go. This was the hardest decision I have ever had to discuss in my life. I refused to believe it was too late. We had beat the odds so many times before, my mom beat cancer at 67 years old. I had just taken her to Apple Hill, we had just played yahtzee at home the other night. We had every last doctor appointment on one piece of paper, the end date on the calendar. How am I standing in a hospital room days later, with a doctor asking me if I want my mom to live?

The entire 9 hours my mom was dying, I laid with my head on her chest. The last two hours of my mom dying, I laid in the hospital bed with her. I felt her breathing start to slow, as I thought about how it had all come full circle. Just shy of four months ago, I was laying with my mom in the hospital bed of the ICU as she got chemotherapy after finding out she had cancer that was expected to end her life, but she beat it. Here I was now, laying in the hospital bed of the ICU, knowing this was a battle her body was too tired to beat. The time left with my mom was countable, there was a timer running and I could feel it.

Even as I felt my mom take her last breath, I still couldn’t believe it was happening. As I write this now, it is as if my brain refuses to understand this is happening. I am 22 years old, my mom is all I have had my entire life. My mom had me as a rainbow baby at 44 years old. I already felt like my mom having me at a later age in life stole so much time from us, and now it is really over. She died at 11:30pm on September 29, 2023. 1 month and 1 day before her 67th birthday.

Now I am here, without my mom, with no job, and with her new home she didn’t get to live in for more than 5 months. My sister, with two kids my mom helped raise from birth, is lost without her. We have only ever had our mom, and now she is gone.

I am starting this gofundme in her memory, and to help continue to pay for bills in her home until we are able to go through her belongings and sell the house, and to help pay for cremation/memorial costs. My mom was one of many who worked hard her entire life, gave her all, and died with almost nothing to her name. She was a woman who deserved everything, finally started getting a second chance at life, and got it taken from her. We come from a paycheck to paycheck family, and what little money she had to her name went fast on bills for the new month.

My mom was the most selfless, giving, kind person I will ever know. She left an abusive marriage when I was 4, got herself a nursing degree, picked up multiple jobs, and became a superhero in me and my sisters eyes. She did all of this herself with no help, and in her late 40s, early 50s. My mom has always worked to provide for her family. My mom loved the arts, almost pursuing art college as a young woman, but didn’t because she had family to take care of. My mom sacrificed her life to make others lives better, and I thought she was finally getting her second chance. I will never know another woman like my mother. I am so lucky I had her for what short time I did.

If you took the time to read and are able to spare anything at all to help with these costs, I would be eternally grateful.

venmo: @marleenwakefield