I watched my mother die from a traumatic injure a few nights ago, she was in agony and terrified.

**Some background info:** I live in my own home, where my parents had moved in with me for the past few years paying a small amount of rent. My mother (64 years old) was a good *200kg*, diabetic and lived a very inactive and unhealthy lifestyle, and could barely walk. My father whilst overweight, is much smaller. They slept together on a Double size bed. For the two days prior to the incident, my mother had been feeling light-headed and slept most of the day (and did not eat) the day of.

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**Incident:** So a few nights ago, I went to bed early around \~8pm due to having an early shift of work the next day.

At 10:25pm (near on the dot), I awoke to an incredibly loud crashing. It was loud enough that I honestly thought someone had crashed into the house. I got a distressed call from my father in the next room shortly after.

I entered the room to find my mother on the floor. They had gone to bed a few minutes before hand after watching TV, and just as my father was drifting off it appears she simply rolled off the bed.

She was extremely disoriented and actually thought she was still in bed. She was able to roll over and we saw that she had struck her face on the bedroom door (grazed bridge of nose, scrape on top left hand side of head below hairline). She eventually sat herself up, and appeared fine if a bit agitated.

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After a little bit of talking, we discussed calling an Ambulance. She got very agitated at this thought and said she would go to the GP in the morning. Both me and my father were a little sussed out at this, but okay... So we ask if she can get up at least and get back onto the bed. She was unable to and argued, and argued about sleeping on the floor. Nearly in tears asking us to just let her sleep. Now, I am very concerned about concussion but she just lays herself down. We leave her for a few moments just to see what is going to happen. Within probably 5 minutes, she begins to moan whilst breathing. We quickly go to see what's up and call that Ambulance. She sits back up, and they dispatch.

The moaning soon becomes much louder (she is conscious) and she begins to complain about difficulties breathing. I call the operator again to let them know it is going badly.

She becomes much more scared and panicked, complaining about the inability to breath, horrible moaning. My father is holding her up supporting her.

Trying to stay calm, I whisper in his ear that we are very likely going to be doing CPR shortly.

She then goes still for a moment. We actually fear she has literally just died, so we call to her. She responds, then immediately starts making these horrible gurgling sounds (almost like a duck quacking?) and kicks frantically. She appears conscious and is absolutely terrified. We tell her to stop trying to stand, as she is struggling horribly. Then her head drops, still seems to be breathing but very shallow.

I check out the front again and can see the blue lights coming around the corner for the Ambulance. I hear my father call out to me that she has stopped breathing. I jump inside, torn now as the vehicle has just pulled up - It has been about 30-40 seconds since breathing stopped. I make the decision to run out and tell the paramedics she has stopped breathing as I make the snap judgement that my elderly father and I are not going to be able to move her to a flat surface.

They rush in and find no pulse.

We quickly reposition her into the hallway outside the bedroom (took 4 of us to move her, it was a struggle and I felt her wrist break in my hand at one point, though I figured bones breaking are better than death). They get a defibrillator onto her. It doesn't even detect arrhythmia (it detected *nothing*), at this point maybe 100 - 140 seconds or so has passed since breathing stopped. The paramedics to their credit worked extremely fast.

They also called for backup to assist, and we were eventually moved to another room of the house whilst they intubated. After 30 minutes of no response, and their realisation it would be impossible to transfer her to a hospital whilst keeping her hooked up to anything, they called it.

They left us alone whilst they called the police (which is fair, as in their perspective they never saw her alive), and left us to say out goodbyes. They left her face uncovered, and I really, really wish they hadn't. Her eyes had gone bloodshot, which I presume is the result of blood pressure from asphyxiation. The intubation tube was naturally left in, strapped around her head distorting it. Combined with the pale blotchiness, it was a horrid sight.

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After a police statement was taken, contractors were called and the body was removed by 3am or so.

This is getting hard to type, but long story short I just keep seeing flashbacks of her terrified last moments. Considering her weight and the fall, I am presuming she damaged her lungs/sternum/ribs. I have been fixated on researching chest trauma the last 24 hours and am assuming that she has died of Hypoxia caused by blood/gas escaping into her chest cavity slowly crushing the lungs.

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Just watching her flail in a panic, presumably drowning or suffocating. She knew she was dying, and it just keeps coming back. One moment I am fine, the next I see it again.

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It all feels so surreal.

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To be honest, I don't even know what I am asking.

I just felt I needed to type it all out, voice it in some way.

Sorry for the wall of text.

**Edit:** Thanks for all the words, both kind and helpful. For those that may wish to know, we got a letter from the coroner today.

The Forensic Pathologist is of the opinion that her death was caused by *pulmonary thromboembolism* in association with *deep calf thrombosis*.

In human-readable terms, it would appear that a clot (or multiple) broke free from a vein in her leg and travelled up to her lungs where it caused an artery blockage. This would have had a cascading effect, and would explain her fatigue the 48 hours leading up to the event. As the lungs began to fail, this possibly caused some sort of blackout which made her fall from the bed. The entire fall essentially being a *red herring* and only a symptom, not the cause.

The long and short, is that without medical intervention she was likely going to die that night regardless. For her, the worse part was that she was awoken by the fall. She likely would have passed in her sleep that night had she not.