Stand by Debbie: A Journey to Healing

My name is Ciara and this is about my mom Debbie. Plenty of people know her as Ms. Debbie, or Mama Deb. She’s known and loved by many. Born and raised in this little town we call home, I am a third generation Whidbey Islander. My mom spent many years caregiving for special needs children and never failed to be selfless in any given situation. She is kind, sweet, caring, loving, and maybe even a little too forgiving at times. She always sees the good in others and in any situation. She spent many years giving back to others before she became disabled and could no longer work.

It took many many years for her health to slowly decline, and for that we are thankful. It wasn’t until 2020 that things really began taking a turn. She had a heart attack and after that, nothing was the same. With many lifestyle changes, we learned a lot about her health needs and made the much needed adjustments to lead a longer, healthier life. But we recently found out that, no matter what you do or try to avoid, life can always throw a curveball.

My mom became immobile after taking it easy from recovering after a staph infection in her leg. She’s always had problems with her knees and arthritis wasn’t anything new to us, but was never a life altering issue— until it was. During her downtime she moved much less. Movement became so little that it hurt to move at all. The less she moved, the more it hurt. And the more it hurt, the less she moved. It was a very vicious cycle that we couldn’t get out of. During the end of October into early November my mom and I spent countless hours at the hospital on multiple occasions. Since she was immobile we relied on paramedics and the fire department to get her safely in and out of the house each time. Every visit showed no signs of anything significant besides the arthritis so therefore “nothing is medically wrong” and we were sent home with no resolution.

After the third or fourth visit to the hospital and a telehealth appointment with her doctor we were able to get a Home Health Aid (HHA) into our home for a physical assessment. At that point, my mom had a few open bedsores that my family and I took the best possible care of, but suffered from excruciating pain in her knees that hurt at the slightest touch. The HHA suggested we go to the hospital yet again because she couldn’t perform an assessment with the amount of pain my mom was in. Most of it physical, and now a lot of it was psychological considering my mom would freak out before anyone even touched her just from the anticipation of pain. So the next step was to get a referral to a skilled nursing facility to get her rehabilitation for her knees in order to walk again. The fastest route there was through a hospital referral since “nothing is medically wrong” but it was unsafe to have her at home.

My family, close friends, and I spent two months taking the best of care of my mom, the nurses were proud and always asked me how we did it. When a health professional came to our home and couldn’t even help, I did what I could and after a week in the hospital, my mom was finally accepted to a skilled nursing facility. After that our lives completely changed.

As of December 6th my mom stayed in a skilled nursing facility on island with hopes of wound care and physical therapy. Little did we know that after just one month of residency she would be on a ventilator fighting for her life.

My mom had few bedsores when she reached the nursing facility. During the initial evaluation the wounds she still had left looked amazing. The wound care team dressed her wounds and had planned to keep track of the progress. Within the next couple of days a physical therapist came for a consultation and overall told us it would be a long journey to walk again, but he had faith. We all did.

Days go by and Mom slowly changes. She’s in a great deal of pain but she had been for so long that it didn’t come as a surprise. I was there every single day questioning the doctors and the clueless nurses who all gave me no real answers. We held on to hope for so long. My mom slowly began to deteriorate. She was completely delirious but I had no idea what was actually happening. I hadn’t seen her wounds since the first week she was there. I knew how they should’ve been taking care of her but I was just hoping, AS PROFESSIONALS, they would do their job. So I won’t go into much more detail of the care she DID NOT receive, but just know this— she was neglected. She had a wound she didn’t come to the facility with that had grown on her back to the point of a flesh eating infection. Turns out she had a gaping hole the size of a large man’s closed fist at her tailbone. A month goes by and I had had enough. My mom was pale, shaking, thought she was pregnant and going to school at the age of 67. If I hadn’t called the ambulance to get my mom out of the facility on Friday, January 2nd, she wouldn’t have made it to the following Monday. Her body was shutting down.

My mom has been fighting for her life for the past two weeks. The doctors were uncertain if she was going to make it.. but she is a survivor. My mom is so strong and resilient. She has suffered the worst at no fault of her own and is continuing to fight every day. She has been transferred from a local hospital to Virginia Mason in Seattle, and now residing at Harborview in order to receive the best care. She has no recollection of the events that led up to this because she has been sick for so long. The infection was septic and spread to her heart, pacemaker, and brain. She was in an induced coma as they rushed her to emergency surgery for the first time to take all the dead flesh from her back end. She has so far had a total of 12 surgeries between the two hospitals to take more and more flesh. With this type of infection, it will require more surgeries to contain it. They believe she had a stroke from the infection that spread to her brain. On top of it all, she will need a pretty intense heart surgery to replace an infected heart valve and pacemaker lead. We are still currently waiting to hear from neurology to see how to proceed with the infection in her brain and possibly her spine.

My mom took her first sips of water in two weeks just yesterday. I am so thankful for all the progress she has made. She truly is a fighter and we know there’s a long road ahead, but she’s ready to keep going, keep fighting, until she can come home.

If anyone knows me, they know how much my mom means to me. She is my best friend and I tell everyone that. I’m trying to be strong for her but it’s not easy. I’ve lost my main source of income as I was being paid to be her caregiver. We lost both of our senior cats within a month of one another, one of them on the day I got the call my mom was rushed to emergency surgery.

I am really struggling in every aspect. It’s so hard for me to be vulnerable, I’ve had to be strong for so long. But I am truly having a hard time. My life could change at any moment, and I just want to be with my mom. I’ve spent my small savings paying what I could for bills and trying to stay close proximity to my mom whenever I can. Seattle is about two hours from home and even driving there and back is really starting to add up with gas. Hotels are extremely pricey along with everything else in the city. During this last trip, my car was broken into

I can’t seem to catch a break.. I just want my mom to come home healthy and I wish to be by her side any moment I can. Home is not home without her, and especially after losing both of our cats, it’s emptier than ever

I’m struggling to make ends meet let alone find a way to see her. Anything helps, she will be in Seattle for a few months at the least. If you’ve read this to this point, thank you. The doctors say we (her family) offer the medicine she truly needs. The medicine they cannot give her. And I believe that. Prayers and vibrations travel far and wide, but there’s nothing like being right by her side.