Thanks for the prayers
I just got back into town tonight. I left Sept 26 from Biloxi to Jacksonville, Fl to be with my sister while my mom was in the hospital. It was worse than I ever expected. When I got there on Sat went straight to the hospital. Mom was sedated so she would feel no pain and she was on a ventilator. Her body would jerk and twitch every now & then so they gave her more pain meds to stop the jerky movements. On Sunday the neurologist came in and asked me how much I knew of what had happened and her prognosis. Told him just what my sister had told me. He told us there was no hope for her, if she lived she would be a vegetablr, there was no brain activity. He suggested calling Hospice which we did. We knew her wishes were to not be on a ventilator and kept alive just by tubes so on Monday, Sept 28 we told the doctor's it was time to discontinue the ventilator. They had us go outside the room when they took the ventilator off and turned off all the monitors in her room so we wouldn't hear them, but I could see the nursethrough the window, she was sitting behind the glass watching 2 patients rooms in ICU. It was probably not more then 15 min later she quit breathing and went to be with Jesus. My sister said something and the hospice nurse said just a minute she would be right back. I told Lana then that I thought she was gone. The nurse was on the phone then came in and checked with her stethoscope and said she was gone. Now at this point we both kind of lost it. I have nothing but praise for those 2 ladies from Hospice that were there with us. They stayed with us, comforted us, gave us numbers to call for grief counseling, did everything humanly possible to ease our grief. Then came the hard part. We had to arrange for her body to be sent to Kentucky for burial. That part was a nightmare. On Monday night a nurse from Fl Tissue Services called me and said my mom was eligible to be a donor. First they wanted her tissue or skin, but they would just take it from her back and lags so nothing would show. My sister and I agreed to that. They called back later and wanted to take her bones. I told them no way, nothing else except what we had already agreed to. Her eyes were bad so they couldn't use them either.They supposedly got done a little after midnight that night. The funeral home "supposedly" picked her body up from the hospital on Tues. My sister and I got plane reservations on Tus morning to fly out at 10:00am for Kentucky. When we got to Memphis my brother-in-law called and told my sister that the tissue service had called him twice wanting her bones, then the funeral home called him and said they couldn't pick up her body because she had so many donations to be done. Then I came unglued. I called the # I had for tissue services and told them I had agreed to tissue and skin only and there better be no bones gone or anything taken from my mother or they were going to be in serious trouble. I finally got a call back from them the next day saying no bones or anything other than what I had agrred upon was taken. I have always believed and wanted to donate viable body parts but after what we went through with my mom, I can see why some people don't do it. They just kept hounding uswanting even more. My brother doesn't know we even did the skin, because he would have a fit if he knew. Anyway, we were then told they couldn't ship her body before Thur or Fri, and we had to wait for the death certificate to be signed. After being upset to no end, we finally nfound out that in Fl the funeral home has a mandatory 24 hr hold on the body, I don't know if that is just for bodies being transported somewhere else or just in general. They did ship here body, it arrived in Nashville Thurs. night, and the funeral home from Kentucky drove to Nashville to pick up the body. We had the wake on Fri night with the funeral on Sat, Oct 3. It was a beautiful day, I was worried it might be raining because it was predicted, but it was a beautiful sunny day. We finally got copies of the death certificate earlier this week. The transport company that handles shipping the body filed a grievance against the doctor who signed the death certificate. It seems that he has 72 hours after the death to sign the death certificate and he didn't do it in that time period. They were upset with him because they couldn't get paid until the funeral director got a copy of the death certificate. It has been a long, stressful time but we made it through with prayers from friends like all of you. Thank you so much for the prayers, they mean so much to us. I know mom is in Heaven and that is what makes this bearable. On another note, the Monday after mom was buried my mother-in-law sufferd a stroke and was in the hospital for a couple of days, ending up being a mini-stroke. Then this Sun (18th) my cousin who is 4-5 yrs older than me suffered a massive heart attack and died, and my husband's aunt is in the hospital facing surgery. She had a heart cath and has 4 stents in her heart, but also has an aneurism behind her heart and an abdominal aneurism that they are afraid may burst before they can do surgery. They were going to send her to Nashville to have the surgery when it was 4 cm, but it is now 6.5 cm and they said she wouk=ld have the surgery there at the hosp in Ky. They have to wait for the Plavix to get out of her system before they can operate. Her blood count has to be under 20 and today it was 23, so hopefully Wed. or Thurs. Please continue praying for my family, all these things have really stressed me out. Thanks for listening to me ramble on. You're a great family, and I love you all Linda
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