Fight to the End...R.I.P. Mom, June 18th 2008

My mom contracted the hepatits C virus from a blood transfusion 1994 when she underwent open heart surgery.  She wasn't diagnosed until 2000.  Even before that, she had symptoms for 3 years before she was finally diagnosed.  Her doctors put her in consideration for the alpha interferon treatment, but she wasn't a candiate for the treatment, due to her previous heart condition she was at more risk for fatality.  Now, my mom was always an active person, especially after her open heart surgery.  She would walk at least a mile daily, if not more.  One thing her doctors couldn't figure out, was why meat made her ill.  She always had terrible abdominal pain, but when she ate meat or excessively fatty foods, her abdominal pains would intensify.  They sent her to all kinds of specialists, with no answers.  In the end, all the doctors could do, was give her pain meds...in addition to the medications' she was taking for anxiety, and her heart probelms.  But, she never gave up, she kept trying to get her specialist to reconsider her for the alpha interferon treatment, she never cared about the risk...but she was always denied.  So as the years since her diagnosis wore on, she was constantly in pain, day and night...some day's better than other's, some worse, you know how it goes.  Slowly getting worse...it started off with weak spells...she would just fall for no reason.  First in the shower, going to the bathroom, to bed...she knew something was wrong, but her doctors said she was FINE.  Then she started vomiting...it wasn't often, and it wasn't bloody, so since her doctors kept telling her she was FINE, she just let it go...but she knew something was going wrong and she said it all of the time.  Once she was always an early riser, but in the past few years, she became fatigued and would stay in bed all day.  Her falling spells happened more frequently, she was severely depressed , and was vomiting more regularly, her stomach swollen.  Even her mind was effected...she would start mixing my brother's and I's names up, although she did that often throughout our lives...she was born and raised in Korea, but before she would laugh and catch herself, now she wouldn't even realize she was doing it.  She would also start speaking in Korean in the middle of conversation without realizing it...her speech slurred sometimes.  The last year was the worst of them all...Sometimes she didn't know here from there, but sometimes she was concious as could be.  Vomiting more frequently, but now it was bloody...she was so weak she couldn't even make it to the bathroom, or control it...one night she was cleaning up vomit from the carpet and she fell into a corner, knocking over some pictures and waking up my brother.  She was taken to the hospital and 12 hours later she went into shock...she was in the ICU for 5 days.  She was passing blood through her stools and urine, and they couldn't figure out where all of the blood was coming from.  Because of that her blood pressure was continuously dropping, and they put her on a medication to constrict her blood vessels to keep the pressure up.  They had her on the highest dosage possible, and everytime they tried to reduce the amout given, her blood pressure would drop drastically.  Due to the loss of blood, they were giving her round the clock infusions of blood, plasma, and platelets.  Her liver was failing...and because of the blood pressure medication, not enough blood could flow to the kidneys for them to work properly and soon they failed as well.  They decided to put her on a slow dialysis, in hopes that her kidney's would start functioning on their own again if the excess fluid was out of her body...one final M.R.I. was done on her intestines.  Her bowels were necrotic...she had already  been on a respirator since she was admitted into the hospital...it wasn't possible for her to breathe on her own, and she was no candidate for a transplant...they already tried when her liver failed, they couldn't move her out of her room without her going into shock...she had slipped into a coma, the last organ to go would've been her heart.  Instead of waiting for that last painful act, the doctors took her off the machines, and took out the IVs...she took 3 last painful (looking) breaths and her heart rate dropped drastically...she was gone.  Not even 2 minutes later, she was gone.  No autopsy was done, and the doctors never issued a cause of death...but I want to know why?  Her primary physician said she had another 10 years, at least...only a few months ago...they thought my mom was crazy, and that she wasn't as bad as she thought.  And now the cause of her death is unknown.  From all of the research I've done, to me, it sounds like liver failure...mind you, in the last 2 years of my moms life, I hadn't seen her once.  She moved up North with my brother, and although we kept in touch talking on the phone, and occassionally sending a letter or a card, she never got to see me, or my newborn daughter who is now 6 months old.  She never knew I was by her side, she will never know that I was holding her hand when she took her last breath...and I will never know for certainty, why she died that day...I will only have my hypothesis, that in the end...HCV took her life, far sooner than it should have...