Mom

I figured since my Mom will be mentioned very often in this blog and unfortunately in the past tense, that I should go ahead and tell her story!

 

Now I know all girls think that their Mom is perfect but mine really was as close to perfect as one can be. She was the most selfless, caring, strong, independent person I have ever known. My sister & I were her world and she was ours. After having my sister she became really sick. She was then diagnosed with postpartum cardiomyopathy . After that she was placed on the heart transplant list and then it was just a waiting game. She got sicker and sicker but she finally got the call that a heart was available. On November 3,1996, three days before her 26th birthdayMom received her new heart!

 

{they spelled her name wrong, Jerri}

After the surgery Mom bounced back faster & stronger than most transplant patients ever do. She returned to work full time and took care of two kids, practically alone. And she did it like a rock star! She was incredible, never felt sorry for herself and although she was struggling on the inside she never let us think that she was anything less than Superwoman!

 

 

 One day my junior year of high school I was sitting in my kitchen with two friends who had stopped by before their softball game. Mom walked in from work and I could immediately tell something was wrong. My friends left and I turned to my Mom who was propped up against the stove and all she said was "I need a hug". This was very unusual for her because she was not a very affectionate person. Don't get me wrong she wasn't cold or anything she just wasn't very emotional, which I now think was intentional; so that we would be strong and independent like her. Of course I rushed to her, put my arms around her and held her tight. It was then that she told me she was in rejection. Pretty much that means her body was rejecting her new heart. When you have any kind of transplant you take medicine to suppress your immune system but sometimes your body will still identify the organ

as foreign and it attacks it. She had been in rejection before but somehow I knew this time was different. She was put in the hospital and everything got under control but after that her health just went downhill.

 

 

 

On June 27,2008 at 2 a.m, while on vacation with my Dad & his family, I got the call that changed my life. Before we left for Florida my Mom wasn't feeling well and I begged her to let me stay home with her. But she constantly refused telling me she would see me when I got back. The day after we left when I called her I found out she had been admitted to the hospital and once again I begged her to let me come home but she still told me she would be fine. I talked to her again before I went to bed and she sounded fine, said she was feeling better and that she was ready to go home. But then my phone rang and it was my stepdad saying he needed to talk to my Dad. It was then that I knew. After that I blacked out, my life as I knew it was over. Ever since that night and that phone call there has been a huge void in my life, a missing piece of my heart that will forever be gone. Though it has been the worst pain I have ever felt it also made me who I am. And I know that I was blessed to have her as long as I did, most transplant patients live 7-8 years after their surgery and she lived 11 (almost 12). But that was par for the course with her, she was a fighter and she always said all she wanted was to see her girls grow up and for the most part that's what she did and I thank God every single day for that.

 

 

 

 Organ donation saved my Mom's life and when she passed she donated her eyes. I love knowing that someone out there is seeing the world thanks to her! For more information about organ donation

go here

 

"Don't take your organs to Heaven.. Heaven knows we need them here"