It began with the ER doctor who looked at my mother not as a person, but as a frail, old shell of her former self. “I’m going to send your mother home,” he said, his voice cold as stone. “You really should consult with hospice.” My mother, who had smiled through every trial, deserved antibiotics, not abandonment. I pleaded with this ER doctor to please check her urine for a UTI because it was cloudy. I requested lab work to check her white blood cell counts and asked what I would do if I brought her home and she got worse. I told him I would just have to bring her back. Again, he mentioned hospice right in front of me and my alert mother. I insisted this was unacceptable, and finally, he relented with a huff and ordered tests.

The tests confirmed something was wrong. Her white blood cell counts were high, and my mom was admitted for a UTI as her white blood cell count soared. But his disdain cast a shadow over everything. Her admitting doctor echoed the same callous tune: “She’s old and frail, and you need to consider hospice. Your mom has weeks left because she doesn’t have the will to thrive.”

Again and again, he told me this, but it was when he looked my mother directly in the face and repeated those words, stripping her of her dignity, that I began to lose it. As I struggled to contain my frustration, I asked to speak with him outside my mother’s room. The nurse, clearly upset for me, expressed her discomfort with the way he was speaking.

I took him outside my mother’s room and kindly asked him, “Please don’t speak to my mother like that.” My voice was trembling. “She understands you, and look at her now, broken by your words.” Her smile, my anchor, was gone.

Days passed, and she held steady. I stayed every day and night, an armed sentry protecting my mother, simply because of the doctor’s attitude. I felt unsafe for her in a place that was supposed to help people get better. Everything was fine until one evening, when that same doctor overseeing her care ordered a bolus—a rapid infusion of fluids.

I asked the nurse why this was ordered, but he only stated that the doctor had given the order, failing to fully answer my question. It was close to a shift change, and I went to the restroom. Upon my return, I saw the bolus bag as the fluids rushed into her fragile body. I questioned it. “Why are you doing that if she’s not urinating? It makes no sense to rush fluids into her body without checking if her kidneys are okay. Didn’t I also mention that her catheter has been leaking?” I cried. The nurse brushed me off, and based on how my mother’s assigned doctor spoke about her, I felt he didn’t care.

The new nurse came in, and I voiced my concerns. She checked my mom’s catheter and, sure enough, it was leaking and blocked. She cleaned it by flushing it and repositioned it, and soon some urine came out, but the damage had already been done. A few hours later, her breathing began to falter. This continued through the night and into the early morning. I watched in despair as her oxygen needs spiked. I called out to the doctor, “What’s going on now?” He ordered a chest X-ray, which revealed the truth: fluid surrounding her lungs. “She was fine before this,” I insisted, but the doctor blamed her frailty, not his oversight.

The doctor then put my mom on high-flow oxygen to stabilize her. Her scheduled discharge date was February 22nd. For a day, she looked great. But then I began to notice changes in her cognitive ability. I questioned this, and immediately the doctor said, “Oh, it’s her dementia; she’s fine.” No, she wasn’t fine, I stated. My mom never acted like this. The doctor told me to relax and walked out.

As my mother’s advance care directive holder, I was able to view all her lab work and began noticing a trend of her carbon dioxide levels rising. Each day, as we approached discharge day, I asked the doctor, “Why are her CO2 levels increasing?” Each time, all I received was a cold, “She’s fine,” as he dismissed me.

With each passing day, I watched my mother slip away. On the surface, her vitals looked okay, but something was wrong. On Friday, February 21st, my mother said, “I love you.” Those were the last words we heard her say. When I awoke on what was supposed to be her discharge date, horror struck. I found my dear mother catatonic, eyes rolled back, a shell of the woman I loved. I immediately checked her labs and, sure enough, her CO2 level was dangerously high. It had continued to trend upward, and I now demanded answers.

I filed a grievance against that doctor and requested a new one. A new doctor took over, ordered tests, and confirmed my fears: lethal CO2 levels that had been ignored for too long. A BiPAP couldn’t save her fast enough. That evening, the on-call doctor rushed into my mother’s room as her oxygen saturation was falling. He looked at my mother, her eyes rolled back, gasping for air, while my brother and sister were in tears. The on-call doctor told me, “Your mom is dying. If this were my mom, I’d let her die.” I responded, “Well, this isn’t your mom. Intubate her now!”