It’s been a minute.
So, a lot has happened. The entire reason I ever started this blog was to be better about writing more and putting it out publicly. Unfortunately, that requires a certain type of headspace. I had it for some time, and then I didn’t anymore. And, also unfortunately, I still don’t.
But, a lot has occurred since I stopped writing here — I’ve been writing, just for myself, not here. It’s been almost four years since I posted on this blog. But a lot has transpired since then, and a lot of people who I consider very important to me have encouraged me to start again. This is my first step.
With this first step, though, I have to share the biggest change of all: My mom died. My mom died on April 11, 2026. It was four months ago today. I have had to live almost one half of a year without my mother, who was always my best friend, my partner in crime, and everything in between. She wasn’t like a regular mom, she was a “cool mom,” just like from Mean Girls, but even better. She wasn’t the best person I have ever known. She was never just my mom, even when I was a teenager and all we did was fight because I had annoying teenager hormones, she was still my best friend. Being an only child gives you a very special relationship with your parents. They’re still your parents, and they still parent you. But at the same time, it’s like you just automatically get two grown up best friends, too.
First thing’s first; let me explain. A handful of years ago, my mom got diagnosed with charco syndrome. The best way to explain this to someone that hasn’t had to learn about it extensively like I have is to say that it’s sort of like TMJ; your bones grind together until there isn’t necessarily anything holding them together anymore. My mom had this in her left ankle. She had essentially broken or sprained her ankle bending over to pick up a silly little q-tip in the bathroom (it was mine, so this is all my fault, which she never ceased to remind me) and didn’t go to the ER or doctor for a while longer than seemed okay to all of the rest of us. Anyways, fast forward to when she did: Someone, somewhere, made her do PT. Unfortunately, no one knew she had charco at the time, so she went and did her PT, and then we found out later on it was the worst possible thing she could have done. Once she got diagnosed with charco for real, we found out she’d need surgery and to be in a cast for awhile to heal. So, we do this. We get referred to this wonderful doctor all the way in St. Louis at Barnes, and we only work with him. He does her surgery, it’s flawless (just like him), and we get her in a cast to start her healing. This was pretty serious. She wasn’t able to put any weight on her left foot and ankle at all. This meant she had to move to the downstairs dining room in my parents’ house because their bedroom and bathroom are upstairs, which she could not go up anymore. My dad, the best caregiving man in the whole wide world, bought a hospital bed for my mom to use while she healed and recovered so she wouldn’t have to put any weight on her foot like she was supposed to. As she healed, we had checkups regularly in St. Louis. My dad and I dedicated a lot of time and effort (and missed work) to make this happen. We did this for 10 months. And at her 10 month check up, we found out that she had some kind of infection. All the progress we had thought we made went out the window when we found out she’d need another surgery to remove the infection and restructure her ankle again. This meant one more surgery and starting over her healing process. When this didn’t work, again, to no fault of her fabulous doctor, she was given a choice: try a third surgery or amputate her left leg below the knee.
The majority of my friends and family know that my mom chose the latter after a long, hard, extensive conversations with me, my dad, her doctor, and her other friends and family. And unfortunately for her, we all told her the same thing: “We’re not in your position. We can tell you what we think, but we can’t tell you what to do. We aren’t in your shoes. We can’t make this choice for you.” She decided that she’d rather not waste another 10 months, or who knows how long, for something to potentially go wrong again. We went through with her amputation. As a family. We stayed with her in the hospital for 16 consecutive days. I slept on the floor because she was in a special, isolated room, because she ironically also tested positive for COVID-19 before her surgery. She was only allowed one person to spend the night, but the nurses and doctors there just turned their heads and pretended I wasn’t there. Only one time did they ever kick me out and make me stay in a hotel so my dad could stay with her to “follow the rules.” She recovered, she healed, she rested, and then finally it came time to be released to go home. Of course, this is when all the paperwork problems began. My mom was off every IV, every drug except her normal, every day pills for her diabetes and insulin usage. But we waited. And waited. And waited. I kept working from the hospital. In all that time, I took off one singular day. I even interviewed for a new, better job while we were there. I ended up turning it down, knowing that no one else would ever let me take care of my mom the way I knew I’d need to once we finally got home. For two days we waited on the proper paperwork to have her released. Then I took her home.
From there, there were a lot more trips to St. Louis. A lot of long days. A lot of time off from work. And through all of it, I moved back in with my parents so my dad wasn’t taking care of her all on his own. After her amputation, she had to go back to that hospital bed in the dining room. She had to keep staying downstairs. She had to stay in bed. She didn’t have special wounds to clean anymore, but she also only had one leg now. She had bad phantom pains. She missed going outside. She missed shopping and cooking and going to restaurants and taking long car rides. For a long time all she could do was lay in bed, get up and pivot to use the bathroom, watch TV, play on her phone, and bother me while I worked from home right by her side (literally; my desk was set up right next to her bed in case she needed me for anything at all). We played a lot of silly games. I bought us those Highlights books to find all the differences. We did crossword puzzles. And eventually, I caved and got her TikTok — Boy, was that a mistake. Anyways, we did it all together.
Eventually, we went back to St. Louis and started the fun process of getting her a set up and fitted for a prosthetic. It went like this:
Fitting for non-permanent prosthetic.
Made best friends with the people who did this.
Very enthusiastic to start walking again.
Discouraged when it wasn’t immediate and realized we’d have to work for it.
Relearned how to walk.
I moved back to my own house.
Lots of more appointments in St. Louis.
More best friend time with the fun prosthetic people.
Picked out the “design” for her leg (A purple background with a cartoon person missing a leg that said “Well, I’m stumped).
Started walking more.
Started going out.
Eventually got cleared for driving.
Still had a long ways to go.
Started having more neuopothy and pain again.
Started staying home more.
Stopped going out unless someone went with her.
Stayed home.
Went through depressive episodes.
Only really spent time with me and my dad and my grandparents.
Eventually, my mom stopped wanting to go out. It was getting to be too painful and too hard even to put on her prosthetic. She couldn’t walk for prolonged periods of time. This was discouraging to her, in addition to also being legitimately painful. My dad and I took her on trips to our favorite Amish grocery store, the Dutchman, in Iowa every once in a while. My mom and I had regularly scheduled hair appointments about every six weeks or so. I took her out for fun meals and to Marshalls when I could. The one thing that never changed, no matter her condition, was that we were always best friends.
Even now, writing in the past tense, “we were,” is painful for me. That’s part of what I’m here for. I want to use this as a tool. I constantly have all these thoughts swirling around in my head. I don’t always say them out loud, and I also don’t always write them down. I want to be better about blogging. Personally. So that’s what I’m doing. Read it, don’t read it, but just know it’s for me. To help me heal. Come along on my journey.
This year, for my mom’s birthday, I took her out to get her hair done like we always do. But then I took her to a local Mexican place in town because it’s what she requested. I started a GLP-1, so as much as I wanted to eat every single thing, I didn’t. I couldn’t. My mom was never one to eat too much either, so we both had leftovers. We had a great time. We laughed, we loved, we ate, we drank. It was glorious. We even ran into some of her friends on our way out. We talked with them for hours. And now I’m even more grateful than I was then. It was the Friday after her birthday in March. I got a little bit of a stomach ache, and I attributed it to eating too much. Then, the very next day, my mom texted me to ask how I was feeling. I told her, and she let me know she thought she got some kind of food poisoning from dinner. We both checked with my dad and my husband who ate our respective leftovers. They were both fine. I was fine the next day, too.
This odd “food poisoning” went on for some time. My dad tried everything for her. He got her different things to help her stomach feel better, and when it didn’t help, suggested she take COVID and flu tests. Both were negative. My dad had been urging her to go to the doctor or urgent care or the ER. Of course, as stubborn as she is, she didn’t want to do that. I didn’t push because I am the same way. However, after too much longer, I started doing the same to encourage her. I asked repeatedly to which I was met with sarcastic text messages in return that if it were me I wouldn’t go to the doctor either. I let her know more than once that if I had been sick this many consecutive weeks, with no sign of what’s wrong, I actually would. She didn’t believe me. We moved on. We made plans. It was almost Easter. We were making family lunch and dinner plans to celebrate, as we usually do. I was with my best friend with which I had special plans to go to a local hockey game. I had just finished getting ready and was getting my things together to leave. Then I got the call.
“Are you already in Peoria,” my dad had asked me, softly, panicked. I told him I was, but I could always come home, to just tell me what happened. My mom had tried to get out of bed, in her actual bed, upstairs, to go to the bathroom and fallen to the floor. She couldn’t get up, and he couldn’t help her on his own. She refused an ambulance when he suggested it. She only ever asked for me. I came. I flew home, topping my Jeep out over 110. I took my best friend with me for emotional and physical support, should I need it. When I got upstairs to her, she was hunched over on the floor, crying, panicking, and nodding in and out of sleep. She was exhausted and delusional and could only ask me for help and for water. I had never been so scared in my life. Between the three of us, we got her back in bed, but begged and begged and begged for her to let us call for an ambulance and take her to the ER. I sat with her in bed, crying, asking her to do this one thing for me. Eventually she said yes. From there, everything went to hell pretty quickly.
We got an ambulance to come and get her outside. We got her to the local hospital’s ER. They feared she had a heart attack and didn’t know. They wanted to send her to a bigger hospital with a Heart Floor. We waited and waited and waited for a bed to open up. We finally got her there sometime after 10PM, I think. I don’t even remember. Once she was there, and comfortable, and much, much more coherent, my dad talked me into staying with my friend for the night and sending my husband to their house to watch the dogs. I did. And I’ve never regretted something so much. I woke up and found out they moved her to the ICU. They weren’t sure what was going on with her, but everything seemed to start going downhill from there.
I won’t go into all the horrific details, but I will say that I lived in that hospital’s ICU waiting room and my mom’s ICU room for an entire week. I slept in the waiting room under the stupid, too-bright lights. My dad took off work. I worked from there intermittently. My husband came. My friends came. Family came. We all thought she could beat whatever it was that was hurting her. But, it ended up being too much for her body to handle. There were so many different things take were happening to her body at one time. The day before she passed, the doctor’s had asked if we’d let our family know. We were appalled at the thought that we’d need to tell our family to come see her because there was even a chance she wouldn’t make it. We didn’t necessarily listen. We did things our way. And then things continued to get worse. The next day, we did let people in. We had to make the choice for her, because she couldn’t do it herself. And all she ever told anyone, us included, that she never wanted to be a vegetable. And that’s what she was for nearly that entire week. So we chose not to let her be a vegetable.
At 29 years old, exactly one month after my mom’s 61st birthday, I held her hand and talked to her and ran my fingers through her hair until she took her last breath. I watched as she left this earthly plane. I never let go of her hand. Not once. I never left her side. And I’d do it all over again if it meant I could have her back for just a single minute. My dad, my husband, and my best friend were the only people in that room with her as she passed, hopefully peacefully. I’d never seen any of us so heartbroken before. It was too much to take. After they pronounced her time of death, we all just sat there with her. I don’t know how long we were there. But we didn’t know how to move yet. We had to pack up a week’s worth of our things and all the things my mom had brought with her initially. And we just sat there. Staring at each other. Not speaking. Just crying, silently.
Ever since that day, I’ve been a different person. I barely took any time off work, only what was absolutely necessary to take care of my dad and my mom’s affairs. It has been the hardest time of my life. I’ve, quite literally, never felt this low or depressed before, and coming from a previously suicidal angsty teen, that’s saying something. Her loss has been the most prominent of my life and I was barely 30 when it happened.
Today makes four months. Today also makes the day I choose to be more accountable. I want to keep this up to date, even if it’s just for me, and I’m the only one that reads it. I want to share my grief. My days. My life. I want a real blog. Not just my regular writings and memories, but a real life blog. So that’s what will be here in the coming days, weeks, months, and however long I can keep it up. I truly think it will help. My best friend thinks it’ll help. My therapist thinks it’ll help. I think it’ll help.
Anyways, today has been really hard. I worked from home, because I do that twice a week now, and watched nearly a whole Spider-Man movie on FaceTime with my best friend. I ate some really great, fresh yellow tomatoes and cottage cheese for breakfast, despite not feeling well since last night. I had lunch with my husband on his lunch break from work. I made it through several episodes of one of my favorite podcasts, Last Podcast on the Left: Side Stories, to catch up. And I’ve started writing here again. Going forward, it’ll be more memories, more grief, and more about my days. I hope you’ll stick around for my journey. All I can say now is that I’m giving my best.
Xo,
K.