My Inspiration

Tonight on American Idol, the contestants sang songs that inspired them to reach for their dreams. It gave me pause to think about something that inspired me to enter the medical field, albeit not the exact job I originally dreamed about.
It was Thanksgiving eve of my junior year in high school. I had gone out with some friends that night, returning home around midnight. As we pulled into the drive, I immediately knew something was wrong. Every light in the house seemed to be on....very unusual mom and dad to leave all the lights on. Before I even made it to the front door, it opened and there stood one of our neighbors. "Your mom's been taken to the hospital," she said, "and I'm supposed to take you there now." As we got into her car I began asking questions, but she either didn't have the answers or didn't want to give them to me. We arrived at the emergency room and I was quickly escorted into a small room beside the chapel. My dad sat there holding his head in his hands as my brother cried. "What's wrong with mom?" I asked. "I don't know," dad said. He explained she had been sitting at the kitchen table eating a piece of pumpkin pie and suddenly vomited and fell backwards in her chair. He was unable to get her up off the floor and she was unresponsive. he called an ambulance immediately. About that time, the doctor entered the room. He explained that mom had an aneurysm burst in her brain and she had a lot of blood in her spinal column. He told us that he didn't expect her to make it through the night. I asked if I could see her. He led me into a small area with a curtain around it. There she lay, on a stretcher with lots of tubes and drains. Her eyes were closed and her body limp. I began to cry and took her by the hand. "Mom, if you can hear me at all, I want you to know how much I love and need you," I said through my tears. Then I did something I never done before.
I dropped to my knees and began to pray. I prayed for God to prove himself to me and save my mother's life. I wasn't a religeous person, hell I hadn't been to church for ten years or more. I can't explain what possessed me to do that, it just entered my head and I went with it. I prayed as if my very life depended on it. The next morning, when the doctor entered the room, he was just shaking his head in amazement. "I just can't explain it," he said. "By all rights she should be dead. This was nothing short of a miracle." He then went on to explain that 96% of people who have aneurysms rupture in the brain will die. Mom was one of the lucky 4%. She was alive, but comatose, and remained that way for over a month.
It was Christmas eve and the snow was really coming down as I looked the window of her hospital room. I had ridden the bus to the hospital every day after school to see mom in the hopes she had awoke. Now it was Christmas and I was far from being in the holiday spirit. All I wanted for christmas was my mom. I started to cry as I watched her lifeless form lying in the bed with IV fluids infusing, and her feeding tube protruding from her nose, and the ventilator quietly breathing for her. I turned to the window and for the second time in my life, I began to pray. I asked God to please, oh please! Give me my mom back! It was all I wanted for Christmas and I was very hopeful He would.
The next morning, Christmas day, my dad, brother and I piled into the car and made the trip to the hospital. As we entered the room, we noticed mom was awake! She wasn't lucid, but she was awake and pulling out her feeding tube. I noticed the ventilator was gone and she was breathing on her own. We called the nurse, who immediately restrained her hands and replaced the feding tube. She explained that mom had woken up the night before and they had been able to remove the ventilator. She also explained that mom was still a little confused, and the restraints in place as a precaution to protect her from injuring herself. It was the first step down a long, hard road to recovery for her. But little did we know, the worst was yet to come.
About a week before mom was to be discharged, a routine chest xray was done. A tumor was discovered in her left lung. She was kept in the hospital while they performed a lobectomy, removing the lower two lobes of her left lung. It was lung cancer. They claimed they got it all and she should be fine. She wasn't. About a month after coming home from the hospital, she began to have severe headaches. Fearing another aneurysm, dad took her to the doctor and had tests done. It was a brain tumor and inoperable. Apparently the tumor from her lungs had spread to her brain before it was caught. She bravely went through multiple radiation treatments while dad, Jim, and I cared for her the best we could at home. There was very little she could do for herself and we watched as she deteriorated a little more each week at home. After five long years of being sick, she finally went to sleep one night and never woke up. She knew it was her time. That night, as we were getting her ready for bed and tucking her in, she suddenly had a lucid moment when she looked at me and said, "always remember how much I love you." Those were her last words to me as she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
Caring for mom at home led me to my calling as a nurse. I wanted to be a doctor....to be able to unlock the mysteries of cancer and possibly change the world, but it was not to be. I am a caregiver and I firmly believe I was put on this earth to make a difference in someone's life.