My mother was the most wonderful woman in the entire world. She was beautiful inside and out and she was always willing to help everyone before herself. She taught me and my sister strong values, manners and taught us how to properly interact with society. She was our father and mother basically. My father was a deadbeat, but she was my rock and was always there for her children. My mom had the bad habit she must have gotten from her father of not always rushing to the doctor when a cold set in. She had a cold the week before her birthday. Her birthday was on Friday, November 28th, the day after Thanksgiving. Her and my sister were supposed to come down to Phoenix where I live so I could make dinner (belated Turkey day dinner/her birthday meal). My sister called me around 1:30 in the afternoon and told me that they might not be coming down to due to my mom being very sick. I was angry with her, for not having gotten herself to the doctor. God knows I didn't know how bad it was. I guess all she wanted to do was sleep the two days prior and was in her bed. My sister kept wanting to get her to the doctor, but my mom dismissed it and said it was just a cold. Well my sister finally got her up and in the car once she saw that mom had red spots along her stomach on Friday and took her to her doctor. The doctor told her that she needed to get to Yavapai Regional Medical Center to get fluids immediately. She was taken a whole mile to the hospital by ambulance. My sister called me and told me what had happened, and I dropped everything, gave the turkey in the oven to my ex and rushed up the hill to Prescott.

One of the last things my momma told me was that she was sorry she ruined Thanksgiving. I can't really remember must else. She was always so giving and thinking of others before herself. Even being deathly ill. She was examined and rushed into emergency debridement surgery for 4 hours. It started from an infection in her Bartholin's Gland. The Necrotizing Fasciitis started there and ate its way up her groin, into her stomach, around to the left side of her back and down her leg. After the first operation, we never heard her talk again because they had the respirator in her mouth. Her mother and older sister flew out from Pennsylvania to be here for her and her older brother drove down from Northern Arizona. She was in extreme pain due to the fact that her blood pressure was almost below 60. They waited until it got above that before the administered pain medication. She went through three other surgeries in the next few days to try to get all the infected material. We spent countless hours in the hospital with her, stroking her hair, holding her puffy hands due to all the fluids they were pumping into her. We were even massaging her little feet just to let her know that we were there. Before she was totally out of it thanks to the medicine, I was able to open her birthday present in front of her. I had a picture of me restored from when I was 1 year old. I am 28 now so it is an old picture. Her eyes lit up, and I could see the tears in her eyes as well and her lower lip quivered. I knew it meant a lot to her. Her liver must have stopped working correctly and she got jaundice. She was very yellowish colored, so they put her on a dialysis machine. I think she knew that she probably wouldn't make it. Before her fifth surgery, we asked the Surgeon and the plastic surgeon to look at her wound and let us know if it looked much worse since the last time the took some out, and to come tell us before the surgery. They came out and told us is had spread to places they had already cleaned out, and that it would be inhumane to operate any more on her.

She had told my sister a week before that if anything happened to her, and that there was no hope of getting better, to let her go. That she did not want to be kept alive just by machines. We her children had no choice but to abide by her wishes and let her go, as much as we wanted to keep her here with us. Her mother, sister, brother, a few friends from her work, my little sister, her boyfriend, her boyfriends parents, a few of her friends were there to be with her when the time came. They turned the respirator off and we watched her last few breaths, each one being more labored then the last, till there was nothing, and she was gone. When it was just me and my sister in the room, my little 23 year old sister reached across my momma's body and cried into her while hugging her, like I did after. Was the last time we would ever see her again It still seems like a horrible dream I am waiting to wake up from. She was only 53. It was not her time to go. I will never understand why this had to happen to her. She was such a wonderful person, she deserved way more than she got. If it was her time to go, why didn't God just take her in her sleep.

I pray that they find a cure to this scary horrible evil disease. No one should have to go through that, or to lose their only mother in the world to such a horrible thing. I don't think this will ever get better or go away. There will always be a gigantic hole in my heart that will never be filled. I know she will always be with me in spirit, but I feel selfish in the fact that in spirit is not good enough. I want to see her, to hug her, to give her a kiss on the cheek and tell her how much I love her. To see her (she was 5'0" and I am 6'4") reach up to hug me, ready to kiss me on the cheek and tell me how much she loves me and to be careful while getting ready to head back to Prescott after spending the day with me. I hope it gets easier. I have heard that it does.