My mother, D'ann Theobald Johnson, died at the age of 44, leaving a daughter, mother, sister, brother, and countless friends and distant relatives. She had been battling with a disease known as Lupus for much of her life, though, for most of it, she was unaware of it's presence in her body.
When I was 6, my mother went for a check-up and ended up being kept at the hospital far longer than for only a mere doctors appointment. During some routine lab tests a urine sample was ordered and when the results came back, the doctor noticed that there was too much protein in the urine sample and insisted on more tests. The results of all the tests pointed to one thing, Kidney failure.
After being diagnosed with Renal Failure, Mom needed to know what caused such a thing. The doctors all told her that they thought she must have had a disease called Lupus, but not to worry about it because once it destroyed an organ it would go into permanent remission. I wish they hadn't said anything because, like always, they were wrong.
A few years after their decree of no more Lupus, it came back and started to cause more problems. Mom got sores inside her nose and a strange rash. Later, it started to effect her brain, and caused some strange seizure-like attacks. Five months before she died she was placed in the hospital for "mini-strokes" and was given blood thinners to keep them at bay. Her doctors also started her on Prednisone, a steroid used to treat Lupus paitents. This drug made living with her very difficult. It caused extreme mood swings. One minute she'd be happy and the next minute crying. The littlest things upset her while she was on it and it was strange to live with her like that. Prior to the medication she had always been a pretty even-keeled person.
On November 2, 1998 she died in a hospital from a massive stroke that would have left her a vegetable if she had survived. Thankfully, she had already been in the hospital for another illness when the stroke hit. At 14, I sat beside my mother as she slipped away from this earth. It has and still effects me to this day. Not a day goes by when I don't think about her and wish that she hadn't have died. I guess that's something, like all other motherless women before me, I will learn to live with.