Did my mother die?
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This is a weird one, its been bothering me for years.
My elderly mother had lung cancer, which she had forgotten about as she had a diagnosis for Alzheimers ( her short term memory was pretty bad but long term memory still, for the most part, ok). She had kidney disease, COPD and various other ailments.
I believe she died in front of me, and somehow came back to life, but by the time it occured to me to ask a health care professional about the incident I am about to explain, she really had passed away, and they would not access her records post mortem.
I was at my mothers house, as was her cleaner, and we were all chatting. Mum said she felt hungry and could I fix her a snack. At the moment I left the room, the cleaner yelled at me to return, and my mother was making this awful sound ( from what I have later read, I believe this to be "the death rattle"). She had gone from being of normal complexion, to streaming with sweat, in literally 30 seconds, although she was cold and clammy to the touch. Her head dripped to her chest ( she was in the sitting position), and she let out a long noisy breath. By this time, I was already on the phone to the emergency services. After a few instances of having to call an ambulance for her before, I think I kind of went into "auto mode".
The poor cleaner was frozen to the spot!
I went through the usual questions with the operative, describing what had happened etc, who despatched an ambulance. My mother was not breathing and was totally unresponsive. As I was trying to get her into the recovery position as the operator was telling me to do, I was also talking (shouting) to mum. "Come on mum, stay with me" etc etc. Then, in the middle of trying to drag her from the chair and get her onto the floor ( she was not a small lady), for some reason, my shouting got louder and I slapped her face. It was totally involuntary and to this day I don't know what came over me. I can remember shouting at her to come back. When my slap connected with her face, she inhaled the hugest breath, still sitting in her chair as I had not yet managed to move her to the floor. She then had what I can only describe as a fit of some kind - her arms were outstretched and flaying in a robotic manner, and she swiped everything off her side table, and the sat up normally in her chair. She was confused and clearly unwell, but certainly alive !
By this time, the ambulance crew arrived, to see her sitting in the chair, alive. They were asking her questions, taking an ECG etc. Mums alzheimers was still at a stage where she could conduct a conversation fairly well and had periods of what appeared to be perfect lucidity.
In all the confusion, a medic suddenly virtually dragged me into another room to talk privately. He said "are you aware that your mother has a DNR ( do not resuscitate ) in place?" . I replied yes I did. He then said " I think I have just witnessed a verbal revocation of the DNR. We were going to just make your mother comfortable and leave her in peace, but this changes everything. Do you agree to my assessment?" I replied "OK" ( I agree).
From that moment, the medics went in to full swing, working quickly, they got her onto a stretcher, and we were blue lighted into hospital, and straight into resus ( sorry, cant spell that ).
As she was taken out of her home, she was joking to the medic that she didnt have time to die, as she had lots of important things to attend to before she would be ready to depart.
After several hours of close observation, she was released, and went on to live another ten weeks. It was actually a fall in the garden and a broken sternum leading to pneumonia that became her final downfall.
As it happened, she was right, she did indeed have much to attend to, which included, at her own behest, dealing with the police and other fairly stressful things to attend to.
When she died the second time, if I can describe it as that, she was already in a coma, but had the same sudden sweating thing right before she passed, as well as weird limb movements.
My question is, did I see her die that day, and did she come back to life? For some reason, I need to know the answer to this before I feel I can move on.
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