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Care Partner of the Month -November/December
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Roberta Laws
Brooklyn, New York

Over the next 24 hours my mom's condition began to deteriorate and she slipped into a semi-comatose state. It was at this point that she was given a second MRI which did indeed show the building pressure on the brain. I called Hazella and she met with me and talked to me as a loving friend and counselor about my mom's condition. She made me aware of things that would help me make more educated decisions and was even kind enough to call her specialist on my behalf to ask questions related to mom's case.

That was when the hard decisions began. My mom made it perfectly clear to me before her pacemaker surgery that she wanted NO life sustaining steps to be taken if her condition ever became critical to the point of that kind of decision. To insure her wishes were carried out she had a health proxy, living will and power of attorney executed. So, when the doctors presented me with the severity of her case due to her advanced years and other complications; and the options which involved surgery (which she may not have survived), dialysis (due to failing renal function), the course of rehabilitation, not to mention the question of her QUALITY of life, I found myself having to make the hardest decision of my life. I asked the doctors what her prognosis was without the surgery and they told me that her death was eminent. No matter what all the legal papers say when you are faced with making the decision regarding the life and death of a loved one; you wish that you could wake up and find that it is all a bad dream.

One of the last things my mother said to me was that she trusted me to take care of her; and so always promising to respect my parents wishes I asked the doctors to make her pain free and comfortable, threatened to destroy their facility (diplomatically of course) if she wasn't treated like a queen and began the task of planning to bring my mom home for her final celebration service.