“Love you guys”

Sorry, I’ve been away.

These are the last words my sister in law spoke. Just before they sedated her so the respirator could do it’s job more effectively. She knew there was a risk, as with any procedure.

She went to the hospital with what looked like an asthma attack and was sent home shortly after. A week later, she went back, having trouble breathing – the doctor’s thought bronchitis. She was treated, and when we went to visit, she was happy and ready to be sent home “in a couple of days.”

In the middle of the night, two days later, she had an extremely difficult time breathing, and the hospital could not get her oxygen up to where it needed to be. A couple days later a relative called and told us to get there quick. By the time we arrived she had been heavily sedated, and the working diagnosis was a staph infection in her lungs that probably developed after she arrived at the hospital. Not that we’ll know.

Not that it matters.

On Monday, a couple hours after I wrote the last entry, she passed. Unable to draw another breath. Unable to regulate her heartbeat, and with a myriad of complications arising from these two simple task that I take for granted every minute of every day.

She was two months shy of her fifty-fourth birthday, and had smoked for almost forty years. She had quit smoking three days before being admitted to the hospital, because she was scheduled for a stress test that her doctor wanted to give her.

She was, among other things, a mom, a sister, a nurse, a daughter, and a friend.

And now she’s gone.

I’ll be back. Don’t know exactly when.

Love you guys.

24 thoughts on ““Love you guys””

  2. Oh I’m so sorry Ben. She was so young! Tragic. Big hugs to you and your wife. I’ll be praying for your family during this difficult time.

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