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| Marion K. Larson 10-09-36 ~ 07-27-07 |
My weekly visits were awesome, she taught me SO much more that I ever could have taught her. She had breast cancer and had a mastectomy that left her with lymphedema in her left arm. She was on huge dosages of morphine because of her pain levels. After a year she was discharged from hospice, and I was only allowed two visits with her after that, until the year off hospice was up.
She decided she wanted to become a hospice volunteer so she went through her training and she also wanted to be a Vigil Volunteer so she went through that training, which I taught, and come to think of it, Marty took that training at the same time also. She didn't attend the last two sessions and the Volunteer Coordinator let me know that Marion had slipped and fell coming down from her porch. She was in a skilled nursing facility, the lowest grade facility in this area.
When I went to see her she couldn't even get herself from the bed to the potty chair. She had a plastic cast that fit on her upper torso, so it was very hard for her to get herself in a sitting position at all. I saw her cry for the first time in all the years I had known her. I knew something needed to change, just didn't know what.
I contacted the care home that she had been living in while on hospice and secured her a room for the beginning of the month. I went to see her almost everyday after work to see how she was doing at the yucky nursing home. It was your typical bad nursing home, understaffed and what staff they did have were underpaid and really didn't show they had any heart whatsoever. Her Occupational Therapist came out twice a week trying to teach her to walk and do things on her own. She couldn't do any of those things, and not because she wasn't trying either.
We got her moved to the care home in Prescott Valley, and she was finally with people who loved her and they took very good care of her. She was on YRMC Home Health, which was in the same office as Hospice, so I knew her nurse. He had done his assessment and concluded that Marion was addicted to the morphine and he was going to get her off of it. No matter how I tried to talk to him...he had absolutely NO compassion for her.
That's when my Irish went up. I called her physician who got mad at me for calling her, but Marion had put me as her Medical Power of Attorney, and I had questions for her from Marion. She actually yelled at me on the phone, and that was the end of her being Marion's physician. I had to do something because Marion was not getting any better. She had already had one MRI early on that showed a couple of vertebra were cracked. It seemed odd to me how a fall as Marion had could break vertebra, as they are pretty much some of the strongest bones in the body. At the care home she was becoming weaker and weaker so I knew something was wrong.
I spoke with one of the occupational therapists at work and told her about Marion. She said that she would go see her and that she would call the orthopedic physician that was Marion's doctor. After her visit with Marion she called me immediately and said that she was going to talk to the doctor first thing in the morning because there was something going on that was causing her to be in such pain and immobile. Thank God that she was friends with Marion's orthopedic doctor.
The next afternoon a van arrived to take Marion to get another MRI, this time with dye. I met her at the hospital where she would get the MRI done. The techs let me come in while they did the MRI. We had been joking around about Marty, as one of them knew Marty from his being a Flight Medic. After a few minutes they got quiet, and I knew that there was something wrong. They asked me to leave so they could call the doctor and speak to him. I left, knowing that it was cancer in her bones.
I met her back at the care home. We didn't say much. I just held her hand and we both prayed. She said that her honest belief was that it was cancer. I cried with her as I told her that I thought so too.
We were right. Her breast cancer had spread to her bones with the most of it being in her spine right where she experienced the excruciating pain. First thing she did was to have me take off her plastic torso cast. She said to put it out in the recycling trash can. Her sense of humor never wavered. She relaxed and finally could just let go.
She called and spoke to her one daughter who never spoke to her. She made her peace, as much as one can when your child has pushed you out of their life. Her other daughter at least spoke with her, but there was a strain there also. I wondered how they could be that way to this woman who was so full of love and encouragement for anyone who came to see her. Of course I know now that there are a lot of children who don't have anything to do with either their Mother or Father, because of many different reasons.
I had the wonderful opportunity to tell Marion's home health nurse that he had been wrong about her being addicted to morphine. I did it very nicely though. I read off the MRI report for Marion's diagnosis, and asked him if he thought that person should be on a high dosage of pain medicine and he answered '"Of course, My God that would be awfully painful." I said, "Well, that diagnosis is for Marion Larson, the woman you had no compassion for because you deemed her to be addicted to morphine. You are no longer her nurse as she was transferred to Hospice this morning." With that I turned around and left before he could give some lame explanation.
Marion's whole demeanor changed after she got the diagnosis. She was happy and she was at peace.
She also had some things she wanted done. She had already paid for her cardboard cremation box. She asked me if I would get it, take it to the office and ask everyone who had known her through her years on hospice if they would please draw or paint on the box. She wanted it to be bright and beautiful. So, I did as she asked. Everyone at Hospice who knew her decorated it somehow.
Even her friends from church came to my house to draw something on it, or to at least sign their name. It was beautiful. I had to take it to the care home for her to see it and we both cried. Not sad tears, but happy ones. She was ready to go home.
She couldn't go, though, until her physical house was cleaned. Oh my goodness, where do I even start? Marion was a hoarder. She told me that she wanted her house clean before her daughter came, which would be after she died. She told me a few things that she wanted to go to specific people, but she said the rest of it could go to thrift stores or recycle as much as I could. She said that I could have anything that I wanted, to this day I still have some scotch tape rolls that came from Marion's office back in 2007. That's 10 years of scotch tape!
It took me weeks to go through it all and organize everything. But I did it. The very last things to go I did after she died as a way for me to be close to her and to ask her spiritually if there was anything else to be done.
As I was cleaning out a file cabinet drawer this morning, a paper was sticking out and when I got it free I realized that it was something that Marion had written in 2003 when she was first on hospice.
I want to share it with you....You will see what a beautiful soul she was and remains so even now.
10-29-03
Regarding my approaching death:
I know from personal experience that, providing I am not overwhelmed by relentless pain, there is a kind of peacefulness and euphoria that signals the decline of the physical "self'"and the emergence of the stronger, optimistic spiritual self: towards death.
Granted, I did not die at those times, but the toxicity of the drugs (chemotherapy) in my system served to detach me from the desire to live, not in a negative, depressed state, but in a joyful, peaceful anticipation of the emergence-to-come. It was a positive, fear-less experience.
I look forward to that time when I can go, when at last I am able to join that part of me that is already o the other side - and what a beautiful, uplifting, ultimately Perfect Place that is.
Thank you for letting me go; Thank you for welcoming me Home!
Marion K. Larson
Marion, you will forever be in my heart.
You changed me for the better.
I love you.
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