So I really don’t post HERE much, but just for updating here:
Mom died the day after xmas.
http://files.usgwarchives.net/ok/okmulgee/obits/davisbsb.txt
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12837874
Copy of LJ post minus comments
Beverly Sue Busse Davis
BSBD, Beverly, Sue, Beverly Sue, Beverly Sue in the Red Tutu.
At one time, she was Beverly Sue Hamm — married to Michael Hamm.
I call her mom, because she and Daniel Strawn Davis are my parents.
She would sing to me. `Walk with me. Talk with me.`, or `Chantilly lace, and a pretty face…
We always had good classical albums in the house and listened to them often – Grieg, Mozart, Bethoven.
She lived in the house in Arlington that her dad helped her with. He kept it when my dad was in the picture, even when they paid it off. When they split, let mom live in the house for the cost of his tax, which was less than what hers would have been. Grandpa louie was tough but shrewd. It took momma a long time to come to terms with him. She never really got over her momma dying. I still remember seeing her in the hospital. I remember someone made her a paper cube. I wanted to look inside, because there was writing. Grandpa louie showed me how the IV machine worked. Granny Isol was so calm and polite and sweet. I don’t know for sure, but my aunt said she was 28, and I think I was 8. That would make LuAnn 50, so maybe that’s about right. Anyway. I didn’t get to see granny Isol when she finally went under. She’d gotten a yeast infection from her main line IV. The antifungal killed the yeast, but in the last couple of days of the treatment, it triggerred metastasis I think. Either way, something lodged in her brain. For her last hours, she called out `Praise God`, over and over.
So my momma was diagnosed with partial kidney dysfunction about 3 years ago. She didn’t make a big fuss – she was at 80%, and me and Jenn’s dad had just died. Mom’s right kidney was smaller than her left, but they didn’t do a contrast-dye scan the first time. Mom didn’t like going, and so she left it at that. They said she seemed more or less OK.
So, she’d gained weight and taken on a little liver damage from various drugs. You see, she’d been pretty big for a long time — maybe since I was born and they had to do a radical hysterectomy on her. Anyway, somewhere around 1995, she was diagnosed as Type-II diabetic. She’s been 300-450 ever since.
She was a little discouraged because she was having trouble losing weight. She was sticking to Atkins, almost phase 1, which was NOT a renal diet, but her blood sugar had slower peaks.
So anyway, in Sept she’d started getting a little sick – the usual sort of sick. Actually, off and on for a year she’d have a little tickle here or there. Well, she had been self medicating with some penicillin she’d gotten from MX. It kept things at bay for a while, but never really fixed things long term.
In October, she got bacterial collitus. All that was left was the bad kind, and of it, all that was left was the kind completely resistant to penicillin. She got really sick and dehydrated.
Now, I need to bring up her aversion to hospitals. She hates hospitals. When she was 9 months old, she had an umbillical hernia. Nowadays, doctors give you several years to grow out of it, but at this time, wherever they were staying (they moved alot), they wanted surgery. This would have been early 1942, and the doctor assured her parents that babies DO NOT FEEL PAIN. They wrapped her up in a sheet to keep her still and they performed surgery on her without anesthesia. To this day, she hated having anything constraining on her face, hands or feet, and she really didn’t like hospitals. In addition, her mother died in a hospital, so she felt that they were places to go to die, not to get better.
So, with her collitus in oct, she finally got to feeling so bad that she allowed Jenn to take her to the ER. They admitted her. Her kidney function was measured as creatinine level of 1.5mg/dl which is high for a 62 year old woman, but not massively abnormal or dangerous. The hospital focussed on getting her hydrated, degermed, and overall fixed up. They prescribed metronidazole.
Metronidazole is a VERY powerful antibiotic. It prevents bacterial DNA synthesis and made her SO sick. She called it MetroYucko. She toughed it out through the RX, and when she FINALLY finished it — 14 days later — she started regaining strength.
But the damage was done. She endured the torture. Her kidneys were already compromised and this only aggrivated things further.
She seemed to be on the mend for 7-10 days. She regained strength, went back to work. She was anxious to get back to work.
Then she started getting sick. She hid it from us. She didn’t want to be put back in the hospital. Finally, one day, Stephen at her work called and said mom was really sick. He had to help her out to her truck.
Jenn convinced mom to see her normal doc and he agreed to give her an RX for a different antibiotic, on the condition if she had really bad side effects, she’d go to the ER over the weekend.
Well, it made her sick, and dropped her blood sugar very low, but she wanted to stick out the weekend.
On Monday, she saw her doc. He said her Friday labs were in — Creatinine was at 2.5mg/dl.
Mom was in so much discomfort and so much pain that that evening she allowed Jenn to take her to the ER, and she was admitted.
Now you should know, my sister took care of 99% of everything. She was so good to mom. She wasn’t ready for mom or dad. This will be very hard for her. I have live-in family. She has remote family. Luckily, LuAnn is also in town for a bit. Even with how hard this has been, I can’t really express how much Jenn did for mom and how much she helped mom’s comfort through this whole thing. Mom was one of my best friends, but was Jenn’s real best friend, far above all else.
Through the week, her creatinine levels went up and up. At 5.5, and with lots of IV fluids, lasix, etc, she levelled out at 5.5 or 5.6 and we thought that maybe things would turn around. If not, we were considering the possibility of Dialysis as a jumpstart.
Now, another thing to note, is that mom did not want to be on a machine. She didn’t want the be kept artificially alive. She said she’d hole up at home and die in her comfy chair rather than be alive on a machine. So, the stipulation was, she would try dialysis once or twice, if it was a temporary/kickstart thing.
And the next 12 hour test she went up to 5.9 mg/dl. She was getting more and more confused. The nephrologist looked at her medical history and concluded that dialysis would likely not be temporary. While this was acute onset, it was a chronic issue. Her kidney function had already dropped so much, and output was down very low. Radioisotope perfusion tests of her kidneys showed them to not be collecting wastes except in just a few tiny dots. Effective function was zero.
Mom confirmed to the doc, no dialysis, which is what she’d always told us. She was on pain meds, and fluids.
Mom’s last waking moments were Sunday evening. I missed saying goodbye, but I did get to spend the previous sunday with her. She was in pain and uncomfy. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat with her and talked some, computered when she was feeling bad, cooked when she thought she might try a bite of food.
Mom and had some telepathy when I was a little kid, but we didn’t really explore or practice. She always felt close though. I just always took comfort in knowing she was always just a little drive away.
On the flight home, I talked to her in my head. Alot. We talked on the drive to the hospital, and some at home, and some there.
I finally went to sleep at 4am. I just wasn’t ready sooner. Jenn called at 8:30 and I headed up about an hour later after getting packed/cleaned up for possible overnight stay.
On the way back in to the hospital, she said `JD, hurry hurry hurry.` As I got closer, she was quieter and just said `hurry hurry hurry`. I finally told her I wouldn’t make it there before she was under, and she said `I know, but I have to` and some of the words were concepts and not words. Basically, she had to call to me anyway, just in case. I caught the tail end of her being semi-responsive, if not lucid.
She was on a Fentinol (sp) patch for baseline pain relief and needed the port for morphine microdoses once in a while, decreasingly often.
Local family came and gave her love. Jenn, LuAnn and I hung around most of the day. I went off some to return a rental car and pick up mine. I did some expenses and updated some friends.
Jenn called to say that mom reached a critical threshold. Smooth muscles lost tone, and she started breathing more labored.
So on the last trek there, mom’s voice in my head said in a bit of a snippy voice to all of us, `Why are you inflating me like a balloon? Why won’t you just let me die in peace?` The IV fluids, without renal function, were making her swell.
I got there and I was in a panic. Every breath had sort of a moan. I actually took a picture and a very short video as sort of my own purgitive tonic for the future. I wished her well and gave her all of my love.
We all settled in for a nap in the room. Mom would lick her lips a couple of times, which was strange since she’d not been doing that before. She still breathed the same excepf the these pauses.
At 11pm, the nurses finally unhooked all of her IV except the port. That was it. Like she told me in my head. At 11:07 she took her last breath. She was tired and weak and only had three failing breaths after that. She had one last, slow exhale. A little bit of air slowly coming out, but no more breathing. What happenned is that her tissue was pulling all of the fluid out of her veins due to the high toxin levels. Her blood pressure dropped and finally couldn’t feed any of her enough to keep going. Her skin and hair were so soft. Her fingernails were so long and perfect and strong. Her mouth hung agape, but her eyelids closed most of the rest of the way. We all gave her our love, and our thoughts.
After I distilled and resaid over and over, what it came to for me was, `Thank you for everything you have given me.` Some of the iterative I continued with included, `Thank you for my kids, for your life, and all of the wonderful things you’ve shown me. You defined love for me. You defined the very essence of respect and people and just so much of who I turned out to be was possible because of all you gave to me. Such respect and love that I wasn’t able to find anywhere else. I’m really going to miss you, but don’t to stay here just for us. We will be OK and I’ll look after Jenn. If you can come to visit sometimes, then we’d appreciate it, but really, do whatever you need to do. Don’t sacrifice your new life for our selfish wants. Become one with God.`
And she did. There’s a little dot where I can still talk to her. She’s still around for a while if we need her, but she’s mostly gone. I had offered her up some space inside me, and that part is partly still here. I know this sounds wierd, but it’s the way it is. You’re not required to believe me.
One of the things we discussed in the mind was her weight. I asked her to help me. She was ashamed of her body because of how big it was. She was big because, she told me, of self pitty. I accepted that part of her into me and we both agreed to give up the self pitty for both of us, so we could be there for my kids.
Another thing, from a dream a few months back, and confirmed here, is that for her to really stay would be to sacrifice so much of her energy. In the dream, I offerred to let her have my body to carry forward in. She had hung around for me and given up so much. I think she said 3000 years.
So, IRL, I don’t have her memories. I have part of her essence. It was able to play through the pieces that I DO have, but to build her old memories in me would have taken more energy than she had left. I had 24% of her earlier today. The rest was floating around. If her body roused, then she was pulled away from the place in my mind that I could talk to her. It’s the place where I build my machines and look for faint traces of ideas.
After she passed, I asked, and she said I had over 80% of what was left, and it was merging with me. I had agreed to allow both of us to die in order to give birth to a hybrid inside this body.
So, the 80% of what is left is something like 11% of who she was. I’ll settle for that. I don’t think Jenn or LuAnn would really believe or comprehend this the way I do. Maybe I’m crazy, but it fits my abstract beliefs. Reincarnation isn’t always your whole soul come back in a new body. Souls are more amorphous. When you’re alive, you have this focus of energy, of the pattern. When you die, the tendancy is for your pattern to merge with the bigger pattern, maybe the holy spirit, God, the Universal Spirit, Gaia, etc. Pieces get recycled into others.
SO, most of mom went there. She joined with her mother and father. In joining, she not separate. She and they are part of the same thing. She took alot of great things with her, but she gave alot too.
But part of her stayed with me. More than I had a week ago. Sort of a compromise between what she wanted, and what she knew I wanted.
I can still talk to her, but the voice is echoed by mine. Her pattern is interwoven with mine, like a second voice, sharing the same consciousness. She’s not ecstatic about it, and neither am I, because of what this piece gave up. But, she gains a unique perspective, and will get to be played out through me onto the world further.
Goodbye old body. Whatever is left in you, you can go now. Go with God. We all love you and wish you well. We’ll see you soon.
Official time of death was 11:07pm, Monday, December 26, 2005.
Per her long-standing wants, she will be cremated and buried with her mother and father in Morriss, OK. Cremation is a hot item here in DFW, so to make sure she’s prepared in time, we will have the burial one week from Saturday. That is, January 7, 2006.
Also per her long-standing wishes, there will be a Wake. It won’t be traditional, because it’s not right now. It will most likely be 2 weeks after her burial.
There is so much more. I wish you all could have known her. You would be thankful for the gifts of her as well.
If she were not my mom, I still would have wanted her as my friend.
