A big reason I'm here at the house with my folks is to help mom and dad. Although both have been in generally good shape, both also have problem with daily tasks, and having me here makes things a lot simpler for them. But, mom's health has deteriorated at a scary pace since about late November. Both in December and January she suffered mild strokes...in December it simply required an afternoon hospital 'checkout' (which went well), but in January she collapsed on the couch unresponsive and 911 was called. She was 'out' for about 15 minutes but woke up in the ambulance asking WTF was going on. I heard the paramedics saying that she was joking with them on the way to the emergency room. In any event, she was hospitalized for three days while they ran tests, then came home. She was supposed to see a vascular surgeon ASAP, but the soonest any of those clowns could make an appointment was March. Figures.
She had been having good and bad days, but weekend before last was a bit rough. A week ago Monday she fell after getting dizzy, and while she was uninjured, she had a hard time getting her balance since. I tried to get some work done on Tues. morning and went upstairs to go to bed around 5:30am. Mom always gets up around 3:30am or so and surfs the web and checks email before going back to bed for a couple of hours around 6am or so, and I stopped off on my way upstairs to see how she was (not great, but no particular problem). 45 minutes later dad was hollering for me, and I came back downstairs to see mom unconscious. Shallow breathing, very weak and thready pulse, and poor color. 911 again, and this time we're dealing with what the doctors were calling a 'massive heart attack'. Through all this medical crap we've been dealing with, no one knew anything about a heart problem.
She had a stent inserted in the blocked heart artery, and she was in ICU (St. Luke’s East) since Tuesday the 14th. She had not regained consciousness, and while the docs said that the heart had apparently not suffered as much damage as they would have supposed and seems to be reasonably strong (all things considered), we were, of course, worried about the hypoxic effects on the brain. I had pretty much been living at the hospital since the 14th. And of course, dad is a mess. I’ve never seen him so wounded.
Though comatose, her responses were variously promising and gloomy over the weekend, but we remained hopeful. However, at around 2:30pm Monday the 20th, mom coded. It was brief, and they got the heart going again within seconds, but after the code, she was no longer 'overbreathing' the ventilator, meaning that her breathing was solely at the mercy of the machine. Her pupils also were non-reactive to light, whereas they had been before. She was just worn out...the hypoxia did its job well.
The ventilator was removed at around 6:30pm, and at 6:55pm February 20, 2017, the heart that began beating sometime around March of 1935 stopped, and Ruth Ellen McDonald née Holt was no more.
Dad, of course, is a wreck. Next month would have been their 64th wedding anniversary.
Had more than my fair share of bad moments in my life, but this one was certainly the worst. No matter how much logic says that your aging parents will eventually pass, there's no emotional prepping for it. Mom was incredibly important here as the glue to hold various segments of the family together. We all feel like we're spinning off into the void without her.
My sis and I put together a obit for the website of the funeral home, along with a pic of mom at about 19 years. That's how she looked when dad met her, and I can now understand his interest (I had never seen that pic before).
https://heartlandcremation.com/obituary/ruth-ellen-mcdonald/
There are a good number of AK locals who have been by the house and talked to mom. She always loved meeting the guys who came over and was never short on conversation, smiles, and laughs.
We're going to miss her terribly.
She had been having good and bad days, but weekend before last was a bit rough. A week ago Monday she fell after getting dizzy, and while she was uninjured, she had a hard time getting her balance since. I tried to get some work done on Tues. morning and went upstairs to go to bed around 5:30am. Mom always gets up around 3:30am or so and surfs the web and checks email before going back to bed for a couple of hours around 6am or so, and I stopped off on my way upstairs to see how she was (not great, but no particular problem). 45 minutes later dad was hollering for me, and I came back downstairs to see mom unconscious. Shallow breathing, very weak and thready pulse, and poor color. 911 again, and this time we're dealing with what the doctors were calling a 'massive heart attack'. Through all this medical crap we've been dealing with, no one knew anything about a heart problem.
She had a stent inserted in the blocked heart artery, and she was in ICU (St. Luke’s East) since Tuesday the 14th. She had not regained consciousness, and while the docs said that the heart had apparently not suffered as much damage as they would have supposed and seems to be reasonably strong (all things considered), we were, of course, worried about the hypoxic effects on the brain. I had pretty much been living at the hospital since the 14th. And of course, dad is a mess. I’ve never seen him so wounded.
Though comatose, her responses were variously promising and gloomy over the weekend, but we remained hopeful. However, at around 2:30pm Monday the 20th, mom coded. It was brief, and they got the heart going again within seconds, but after the code, she was no longer 'overbreathing' the ventilator, meaning that her breathing was solely at the mercy of the machine. Her pupils also were non-reactive to light, whereas they had been before. She was just worn out...the hypoxia did its job well.
The ventilator was removed at around 6:30pm, and at 6:55pm February 20, 2017, the heart that began beating sometime around March of 1935 stopped, and Ruth Ellen McDonald née Holt was no more.
Dad, of course, is a wreck. Next month would have been their 64th wedding anniversary.
Had more than my fair share of bad moments in my life, but this one was certainly the worst. No matter how much logic says that your aging parents will eventually pass, there's no emotional prepping for it. Mom was incredibly important here as the glue to hold various segments of the family together. We all feel like we're spinning off into the void without her.
My sis and I put together a obit for the website of the funeral home, along with a pic of mom at about 19 years. That's how she looked when dad met her, and I can now understand his interest (I had never seen that pic before).
https://heartlandcremation.com/obituary/ruth-ellen-mcdonald/
There are a good number of AK locals who have been by the house and talked to mom. She always loved meeting the guys who came over and was never short on conversation, smiles, and laughs.
We're going to miss her terribly.