Heartfelt condolences. 
Peace to you. Sorry for your loss.
awwww. Iām glad you went. It is such a difficult decision. If I got a call right now to say one of my parents were dying, I know staying here would be better because I would need money to pay for the funeral! But then againā¦I donāt know if I could live with myself for the next (hopefully 80 years) knowing that I didnāt say good-bye. We once said good-bye over the phone when my dad had a heart-attack and it was horribleā¦my mom kept on taking his oxygen mask off so he could talk but he couldnāt talk!!!
So sorry to hear about his passing.
Flike, Iām so sorry for your loss. Take care of yourself.
So sorry about your loss Flicka, but Iām so glad you went. You made the right choice. Godās strength and grace to you and yours.
Thanks to you all, for your thoughts and for your support.
What happened was this. A year ago come May my doddering, life-long Kansan parents got a wild hair and like a couple of old outlaws lit out for a car tour of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had just undergone massive flooding. They just dropped everything on Friday afternoon and took off. (My parents had never planned a thing in their lives - financial stuff, vacations, not a damn thing was ever planned) When they got back on Sunday afternoon, my mother fell off the back stoop while trying to unlock the back door and badly fractured her shoulder. By the time the doctors got around to replacing the entire joint with a titanium version six months later, she was in a nursing home. A month later, in December, my dad decided to join her and put their house up for sale. It sold almost immediately, and my non-planning dad learned he had 30 days, which included the Christmas holidays, to wrap things up. Sell things, move things, store things, close on the house, etc., he had thirty days to do it all. In the end he handed himself a death sentence.
In one of the coldest Kansas winters in recent memory, he had turned the heat off in the house so he could leave the doors open. Somehow he picked up pneumonia. Not good for an 81 year old tough guy whoād had my mother around for 57 years to tell him when he was sick and when he wasnāt (I think my dad missed less than a week of work due to sickness since I was born in 1955. Even when he was sick he never complained, he just slept until he could stand up again. My dad gave no quarter and took no quarter when it came to his or anybody elseās health.)
At 3am on December 23rd, 2009, he went to his small town hospital and entered the waiting room. He told the emergency room staff that he didnāt know what was wrong with him, he only knew that he had to be admitted. The staff told him that itās not done that way. My dad said fine, but he was not leaving the hospital. Get a doctor if you donāt believe me, he told them. They did. Then they admitted him and treated him for pneumonia. On New Yearās Eve, he was released. The infection was not completely eradicated, howeverā¦
On January 31, 2010, he went back to the hospital. This time they sent him to a larger regional hospital, where the doctors threw everything in the book at a bacterial culture that had a thirty day headstart. He developed ARDS, and his lungs failed. He was placed on a BiPAP machine. By the time the infection was fought to a standstill, more than 80% of my fatherās lungs were scarred so badly that they no longer functioned as lungs. His blood CO2 hovered around 45% for the remainder of his life.
The day I arrived the pulmonologist informed our family that his choices numbered two and each was stark. One, he could perform a tracheotomy and intubate my father in ICU. He would also bore a hole through my fatherās abdominal cavity and into his stomach, where a feeding tube would nourish him the rest of his life. The pulmonologist estimated that my fatherās chances of being released from ICU and into general hospital care were 10%. His chances of being released from the hospital months later would be less than 1%. If he were released he would have to live in one of two nursing homes on the Great Plains that take such patients, one in Kansas City, Missouri, and the other in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. No family would be within a dayās drive of either place. Not that it mattered because the pulmonologist estimated his chances of surviving six months were zero.
That was choice one. Choice two was to pull him off the BiPAP, dose him with morphine and ativan, and let nature take its course. Twenty minutes to twenty-fours later, my father would die a ādignifiedā death (hah), said the doctor.
It took my mother until Thursday of the week I spent there to work up the courage. Friday morning they pulled the BiPAP off. The family was devastated. A trauma nurse was at his bedside for an hour; they expected him to go into cardiac arrest immediately. The family was utterly devastated.
He lived through the day Friday. And Saturday. On Sunday, a prairie snowstorm set in and left five inches of snow on top of several inches of ice on top of everything except my dad. He was by himself, nobody could get there and my sister had finally convinced my exhausted mother to go to her home Saturday night.
At 2:30am on Monday, February 22, 2010, my father died.
Itās not been easy. Again, thank you all.
Iām with you, and I feel your pain and sorrow, too.
I feel your pain Flike. Your dad lived a full life, and he died in peace with his family around, nurturing him. Focus on that and his life. Remember your dad the way he lived, not how he passed on. Hugs.
Thanks for sharing, Filke. 81 good years. Not bad.
Sending you a hug, if youāre into those.
Bless Ya Flike.
It sounds like he chose his time.
So sorry to hear this, Flike. Glad you decided to go - sorry about the rest.
Sorry to hear of your loss, flike, but Iām glad you were able to make it out there. It sounds like he was one hell of a guy.