Goodbye.
Despite showing signs of improvement, late Sunday night my cousin's brain began to swell. CT scans showed that the tissue had been permanently damaged, and she fell into a vegetative state. Yesterday at 3:12pm, I stood beside my mother and my cousin's son and watched as the doctor disconnected the respirator. After ten minutes without brain activity or unassisted breathing, they pronounced her dead at 3:22pm before turning the machines back on for organ-donor harvesting.
She had made us promise that if something went wrong, that we wouldn't let her live on machines and we would be there when she died. I had never seriously thought that such a simple operation would go so horribly wrong. I didn't even tell her I love you before everything began. I thought, I'll see her again when the surgery is over. It doesn't feel real, but she was too much of a sister to us for me to believe that this numbness will last.
She had made us promise that if something went wrong, that we wouldn't let her live on machines and we would be there when she died. I had never seriously thought that such a simple operation would go so horribly wrong. I didn't even tell her I love you before everything began. I thought, I'll see her again when the surgery is over. It doesn't feel real, but she was too much of a sister to us for me to believe that this numbness will last.