In memory of Roberta Dempsey

I lost my mom in an absolute nightmare scenario - while she laid alone, barely conscious in a hospital bed with a tube down her throat. One of the kindest and most giving women this world has ever seen, Roberta Dempsey passed away on 14th December after a tough battle with COVID-19 and several other associated complications. She was only 55 and shouldn't have been in the hospital in the first place, but that's where COVID found her and eventually, took her from her family. She never expected to leave so soon, and I'd just like to be able to honor her properly and ensure all of her bills are paid off. Our family doesn't have much, and I am an only child, so I cleared out my retirement account to pay for her burial expenses, but we're still saddled with a lot of medical and other bills to pay off. I'd also like to give her a proper memorial service in the coming year. My family would welcome any donations to help ensure a proper memorial service and to help us through this troubling time.

My mom spent the last few months of her life struggling to get out of the hospital after a mild heart attack landed her in a nursing facility for inpatient rehab this August. She spent the better part of a month in a nursing facility supposedly receiving physical therapy, until I received an anonymous call one night from an employee alleging she had been neglected and abused and was not receiving the treatment the facility claimed. The employee, who refused to name themselves, told me that she would die of sepsis if I didn't get her out of the nursing facility. After I got her transferred from the facility to a hospital, doctors diagnosed her with a severe UTI, pancreatitis, and a seriously infected wound. She couldn't really eat, and her mental state rapidly deteriorated in tandem with the infection. She wasn't really able to hold a conversation either, and she developed delirium not long after leaving the nursing home.

She was stuck in a hospital bed, and the overwhelming presence of COVID in the hospital finally made its way to her. They had to intubate her only hours after she tested positive, and the final two weeks of her life were a torturous yo-yo of good and bad news, until she finally gave in to the disease. I called nearly every 2 hours to get updates from doctors, and I video chatted with her every day she was in the hospital, but she was barely conscious for most of them. The photo below is a screenshot I took from one of our many (one-sided) 8x8 video chats. It was heartbreaking not being able to hold her hand as she went through this terrible struggle, given the stringent COVID-19 restrictions in ICU.

She took every effort to protect herself - my mom was fully vaccinated and rarely left the home before she went to the hospital this August. It was so improbable that she would have gotten sick with COVID, but her disabilities and prior conditions left her extremely vulnerable to it. This was her (and my) nightmare scenario, to die slowly on a ventilator. I don't know how much of my mom was in there for the last weeks of her life, but I find some solace in the knowledge that we gave her every chance to fight off the illness until the very end. In the end, her body couldn't take it, and we let her go peacefully with family at her bedside.

Again, my family welcomes any donations to help us honor her memory and to help offset the costs of her end of life care.

For those of you lucky enough to have your mothers around this holiday season, please hold them close and give them an extra hug from me.