mughes

How can a person look exactly the same yet be so irreversibly altered?  The same skin color, the same fingernails, the same hair.  Lying there, he breathes on his own.  But he will never walk, never talk, never drive, and I’ll never again hear his voice on the other end of the phone.  I heard it too few times.

My dad had a stroke on Saturday.  Yesterday we decided to take him off of life support, as per his adamantly expressed and documented wishes.  We didn’t know if he wanted to be an organ donor.  Fortunately, my five siblings, his five sisters and I all easily agreed on the decisions we had to make.  And there were so many.

Do we try to donate kidneys and liver?  That means prolonging the life support for sixteen extra hours in order to determine if there are donor matches.  It also means that he would technically die in the operating room without loved ones nearby.  Finally, we could prolong his life these extra 16 hours and if he doesn’t have a cardiac arrest within 60 minutes of life-support removal we can’t use the organs anyway.  Too many cons.

He smoked for probably 50 years.  There is no way he is a candidate for major organ donation.

We decided that something is better than nothing, he will officially be a tissue donor, they can use his skin, his corneas and his bones.  And if a recipient chooses, they can contact us after receiving their new parts.  That would be so neat.

This morning I had a chance to be alone with him for a couple of hours.  He was able to squeeze my hand in response to my questions.  I explained everything that was going on and let him know that we would take away all of the life support once his sisters had gotten a chance to say goodbye. 

So now it’s 2 am, the TV has some fat-burner x-treme commercial on, with the volume so low I can’t make out a word.  My sister, Melanie, who has spent every night by his side since Sunday, is sleeping with her head on the bed and her hand on his.  And dad is struggling to breathe.  He has a piece of tape on his arm that says 1/7.  It’s taped to something that’s poked into his skin that has no tube running from it.  All of the tubes have been removed and the equipment wheeled out.  His breathing has been very, very labored.  He’s been on his back since late Saturday night and now he’s developing a fever.

Some stuff I learned:  statistically, smokers are 80% more likely to develop pneumonia as a result of surgery.  Smokers are twice as likely as others to have strokes.  Smoking constricts the blood vessels and makes them brittle.  Want to quit smoking?  Come see my dad.  He’s at Swedish Medical Center in Denver.  Frankly, I hope he’s not here much longer, the suffering is unbearable.  His extremeties are sometimes cold and now I’m told that it doesn’t even matter because he can’t feel anything anyway.  But I still want him to be warm.  We have him on a sedative for comfort and an air hunger suppressant.

Before today I never really registered the meaning of the phrase “death rattle”.  I’ve heard it before, but I never, ever imagined what it meant.  Dad started with a rolling snore, long deep drags of air followed by very shallow breathing.  He has progressed to pulling air with his diaphragm.  His breathing is so labored and his airway is getting blocked about every thirty minutes.  I understand that his physical reflex to cough will begin to diminish.  His whole body is working so hard to pull air that his chin moves down and since his head is tilted back, he looks like a baby bird; so hungry.

His stroke was caused by blockage of three major arteries to his brain on the right side.  The cat scan told us that there was no electricity on the right.  No synapses talking to each other.  The only thing that works are the instinctive impulses, like a baby sucking.  The blockage caused a major brain swelling.  One of the possible early treatments was to open up the side of his skull and allow his brain to mushroom outside the skullcap assuming that the swelling would finally reduce.  But this treatment has never been successful for anyone over 50.  If he were miraculously able to recover right now, he would probably never be able to walk on his own.  He would always need a wheelchair and 24-hour care.  His vision would go from 180 degrees (which is what we normally have) to 90.  Dad turned 62 in November, this photo is from our trip last October to see my brother Patrick in Dubuque.

At 6 am yesterday morning, after four hours of sleep I bolted upright . . . Lucy! His beloved Cocker Spaniel.  She must be heartbroken.  Whenever dad spoke about Lucy he transformed into a four-year-old boy instinctively wagging his whole body as if he were Lucy’s tail.  He would tell about their routines as lovingly as a mother with her new child.  I don’t know how she’ll get over it.  I know how she feels.  I just want to take her home with me, but I’m afraid Miss Peppo would be terribly unkind.  I wish she could go with him.  I know she would if she could.  To that big doggie park in the sky where daddy doesn’t have to pick up poo and you get lots of bacon cookies.

Dad’s a Scientologist.  His people have been very kind, available and supportive.  When we were ready to take away all of the life support, they came to do an Assist.  It lasted only about fifteen minutes, but I almost passed out, TWICE and then I almost threw up.  Now, I am a very healthy person and I can spend an hour on the Precor Machine, no problem.  But something happened in this room, which doesn’t feel too full with six people in it, mostly been the case since we arrived.  There was all of this hot energy coming from the center of the bed, spiraling out like a vortex.  I was standing on the side of the bed, in the middle holding the hands of Corban and Melanie.  I kept looking across at Trevor, Patrick and Misti and I think Trevor was looking at the monitor, because the bells were going crazy.  Or else he was looking at the points the Auditor was suggesting.  I ended up having to sit down twice in fifteen minutes.  Trevor felt the heat and Patrick almost passed out too.  The woman who was doing the Assist is quite a powerful woman. 

The one really wonderfully great thing is being here with my brothers and sisters.  My brothers never cease to make us all laugh and we have all been telling lots of stories.  My aunts have loads of goodies about dad growing up and we have all grown so much closer.  I feel very supported. 

My friends really rallied for me.  I called Marci on Sunday just to give her a heads up and before I knew it I had Stephanie in my living room Monday morning, helping me shove an absurd amount of ridiculous clothes choices into an enormous suitcase.  Leilani called me and emailed me with critical lists.  Marci came through with cold winter shoes, which I love.  Melanie and my niece, Elizabeth call these little boots my “California Snow” shoes.  David brought me organic goodies from Jimbo’s, found me flights, rental car and hotel for all of us, he gave me the number for my Dad’s pastor (how do you do it?) and picked up a new headset. 

Mel’s daughters are all here too, Sagan, Elisha, Breeanna and Elizabeth.  And mom and Keln are here too.

I’m so grateful to have you all in my life right now.  I feel sad, tired, scared, and irreversibly altered.  But I know you’ll help me through it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 3:35 am and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.