Became an orphan on Sunday

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The reason I haven't been active much and "going through the motions" on the free games thread is that my mother just died of a previously undetected brain tumor on Sunday.
The only warning we had was missed back in November the day before Thanksgiving when she thought she had a stroke and I took her to the hospital, but the CAT scan said it was an old stroke. They found she had a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) that could cause some mental issues. They wanted her to have an MRI, but the hospital no longer has an open MRI and my mother was slightly claustrophic, and since they found the UTI, she didn't think it was necessary.
Her symptoms were some grogginess, and some loss of peripheral vision. I also noticed her hearing got slightly worse, but she already had a hearing aid.

She couldn't shake that UTI, it kept coming back causing digestive problems and diarrhea, but I didn't notice any further mental problems. They were subtle, but I didn't notice them until she was dying and I was putting things in order.

I've been living with her since the COVID crisis as she had knee replacement surgery on Groundhog Day in 2020, and then I lost my job during COVID and have been waiting until I get a permanent job before moving out again. On Wednesday, Dec 20 she was sick and spent the entire day in bed. I only said two sentences to her and barely saw her all day, when she told me that, and later when she said she didn't want dinner. She spent the rest of the day in bed.
At midnight she got up and said she had to refill her meds, which should have been a red flag since she usually did it on Saturday, but it was midnight. She took her pill boxes into her room where she has the pills in a dresser drawer and tried to refill them on the bed.
After 10 minutes she said she was being clumsy and kept dropping pills on the floor and asked me to help bring the bottles into the kitchen. I did so, and went to play a game on the computer while waiting for her to call me to bring them back.
Then I got engrossed and the next thing I knew it was after 3am and the kitchen light was still on. I went to investigate and found her futzing with the pills. If I had been more awake instead of exhausted and ready for bed I would have insisted on taking her to the emergency room right then, but instead I got her to goto bed.
In the morning she went back to the pills and I got alarmed because she was having trouble sorting them and tried to get her to goto the hospital. Especially since when I interacted with her she acted dazed and confused. It took me almost two hours to get her to get dressed and get going. We didn't get to the hospital until almost noon.
At the ER the CAT scan initially said it was a stroke, and they put her on an IV with anti-stroke meds. However, I noticed her mentally getting worse around 4pm. They announced she was going to be admitted to the hospital when a room was available, but that did not happen until after 10pm. Because it was a holiday weekend, it took some time to get her an MRI, and I did not find the results until Christmas day, when they told me it was a very large brain tumor and that with something that big, she probably didn't have more than six weeks, two months at the most. Worst Christmas ever. She was slipping in and out of lucidity from 4pm on the 21st until the 27th. One minute she'd be having a seemingly normal conversation, then she'd segue into asking about why dead people hadn't come to visit, or even asking me who was looking after me or where I was staying as if I were still a child or young teenager.

They scheduled a biopsy to see if it could be operated on the 28th, but it was too big and did more harm than good as she never really awoke from it. On the 3rd she was moved to a hospice facility, and on the 7th she died, despite them predicting her taking several weeks to recover.

I apologize but I've been depressed since that Christmas when they told me there was no hope of her getting better, and I've been an emotional wreck since the 7th. She's been an emotional anchor for most of my life, now I've lost my biggest source of emotional support.

Now my mother has passed, and I have a wake and funeral on the 19th.

 

My condolences as well. Maybe I'm reading a bit too much into it, but from your post, I got the impression that you're beating yourself over not getting her to a doctor sooner. I know nothing can really make you feel better at this point, but I just want you to know that even if they found it a day or even a month sooner, it most likely wouldn't have made a difference. Although malignant brain tumors tend to be fast-growing (i.e. months, not years), the prognosis would have likely been the same. The only difference is that you both would have been under a lot more stress in her final days. I know it's not much of a comfort, but maybe it'll make it a bit easier to grieve.

 

My deepest condolences on your loss.