Why does it seem like the best people get the raw end of the deal? Like they're the ones who suffer the most?

Like my mom...

After my daddy died when I was a little girl, my mom worked her ass of to ensure that me and my siblings had good lives. She always put our wants and needs above her own. So when she got sick with her heart years ago, it seemed so unfair. Yet, our family got extra time with her when she was able to have a heart transplant in 2003.

The oxymoron of that? The immunosuppressant meds she has to take for the rest of her life so her body doesn't reject her donor heart destroyed her immune system and also led to her kidney failure.

So for the past 8 years she's lived with kidney failure. The last 7 years she's lived on dialysis. The last 4 years she's lived on 4 days a week of dialysis because she also went into liver failure.

Once her kidneys and liver stopped working altogether, she started retaining excess fluid, mainly around and in her lungs.

She also became a bedbound patient almost 2 years ago after a major fracture in her right leg that didn't heal properly, therefore leaving her unable to walk.

And now this...

She's been in the ICU for just over 2 weeks...in a medically induced coma because she's on a ventilator. Her lungs have almost completely hardened (it's called fibrosis something). She's also being given dialysis 24/7 and has to have 3 IV meds just to keep her blood pressure stabilized.

Yesterday my entire family (me and my daughter, my sister and her husband and children, and my brother and his fiancee) were all at the hospital...which is 1 1/2 hrs away...and mom's pastor was there. We had to meet with the charge dr and nurse to discuss "end of life" issues. Needless to say, the drs don't expect mom to survive and so a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order was put in place. That means if her heart stops, that's it. She'll die.

It doesn't seem fair that this amazing woman, who has spent her life doing everything and anything she could for other people, has been thru hell...horrible sicknesses and immense pain. It doesn't seem fair that this strong-faithed woman has to go like this...unconscious, without ever seeing or talking to her children or grandchildren again.

Before we all left last night, me,  my sister, my brother, and mom's pastor surrounded her bedside. After my sister and brother left the room, I stayed while her pastor gave her last rites. I became very emotional. It just doesn't seem fair.

And I don't think it ever will...not to me anyway.