Life Support and other loaded terms
My Uncle Johnny is in the hospital on life support. He's been there a week now, being treated for complications of pneumonia. I've been on standby, waiting to go with my Mom, who has been relying on his wife and her siblings to tell her what's going on, but who also has been making up excuses for why she should go later. My mother doesn't do well with dying. It reminds her too much of my brother - who, as it happens, died five years ago Wednesday.
But yesterday Johnny's wife told everyone, "He wouldn't want to live like this. If you want to see him, you should come today." So we mobilized... which is to say we went back and forth with twenty different plans on how to get two women to Philadelphia, a whopping 45 minutes away.
Actually, it's not that easy, because neither of us should have been driving and my father is an emotional wreck with bad eyes and bum knees. But - as it happens - being good in an emergency is exactly why I married the God-King... come hell or high water, my man will be there, even if he has to drive with one eye closed (true story!). So at a little after three yesterday he carpooled my mother and I half-way to New Jersey, where we met my aunt and my godfather in the parking lot of a rather skeezy bar. Then we drove to Philly, spent time with my uncle and his wife, then ferried back to the skeezy bar and rode home with the God-King (and a very amusing Kinglet, who was awake in the back seat waaaaay past his bedtime).
Anyway.
My uncle is a long-time survivor of poly-cystic kidney disease (the same ticking-time bomb I have). He has had at least one kidney transplant (I think it was two), and he has congestive heart failure. He shakes a lot, shakes his head when he talks. I've never really gotten the full story of what's up with his health, because old people are unnecessarily closed-mouth about things.
Johnny is a big man with a sharp tongue and a quick temper, the kind who says something that makes your jaw drops and then he winks at you. He still sends me twenty-five dollars every Xmas, like I was twelve not thirty(cough). This is because he pretty much missed out me and my brothers and my cousins when we were young. He's my mother's half-uncle, my grandfather's first son from his first wife - a german beauty he got pregnant during World War II. It's an interesting story. There's bad blood there. My ninety-year old grandmother only JUST came around to treating Johnny like family. She told him he when she dies he could have the shell tree he admired last time he visited her apartment. She told Johnny's wife he could have it now, if it makes him feel better.
But the doctor's say Johnny isn't going to get better. Weird thing is, they can't say exactly what is killing him - there's infection pushing his temperature up to dangerous levels, and pneumonia stealing the oxygen from his blood, and the combination of organ failure and the cocktail of drugs they have him on fucking with his blood pressure and... who the hell knows what. He's been sedated since they brought him in fighting last Wednesday. He's been on life support most of that time. The machine breathes for him.
While we were there last night, we watched his blood pressure plummet to dangerous low levels, which the doctors and interns decided was due to one or the other medicines they had given. They gave him something else, and it climbed. Meanwhile, his temperature dropped from 103 and change to 102.5. His body relaxed. My mother and her siblings seized on all of this as good news.
But the doctors are telling his wife there is no hope that Johnny will recover. They're giving him "a few more days". My mother told her the family will support her decision no matter what, but on the ride home my mother couldn't stop talking about how she came out of her coma after three weeks. Thirteen days really isn't a lot of time.
When my Mom was in a coma, the doctor's never said "there's no hope". What they said was "there's thirty-percent hope". Yes, they gave it a percentage. I feel like comparing comas is comparing apples and oranges, and pushing this on Johnny's wife will only make a hard decision harder. But I'm not choosing a camp. I've seen miracles. My mother did live. My father-in-law came back from the brink. My brother died in an instant. Who the hell knows.
All I know is, this is really sad. When I came to my computer this morning, the first picture in my slideshow was one of Johnny and his wife. I have to say, the odds are pretty fucking against that - out of a thousand pictures on this laptop, maybe three are of Johnny.
This is why I believe in more than the eye can see.
In the picture, Johnny was giving that winking-look. It reminds me of my grandfather, with his subtle sense of humor.
Honestly, though, what gives me peace is that if and when Johnny does die, he'll be in good company.
But yesterday Johnny's wife told everyone, "He wouldn't want to live like this. If you want to see him, you should come today." So we mobilized... which is to say we went back and forth with twenty different plans on how to get two women to Philadelphia, a whopping 45 minutes away.
Actually, it's not that easy, because neither of us should have been driving and my father is an emotional wreck with bad eyes and bum knees. But - as it happens - being good in an emergency is exactly why I married the God-King... come hell or high water, my man will be there, even if he has to drive with one eye closed (true story!). So at a little after three yesterday he carpooled my mother and I half-way to New Jersey, where we met my aunt and my godfather in the parking lot of a rather skeezy bar. Then we drove to Philly, spent time with my uncle and his wife, then ferried back to the skeezy bar and rode home with the God-King (and a very amusing Kinglet, who was awake in the back seat waaaaay past his bedtime).
Anyway.
My uncle is a long-time survivor of poly-cystic kidney disease (the same ticking-time bomb I have). He has had at least one kidney transplant (I think it was two), and he has congestive heart failure. He shakes a lot, shakes his head when he talks. I've never really gotten the full story of what's up with his health, because old people are unnecessarily closed-mouth about things.
Johnny is a big man with a sharp tongue and a quick temper, the kind who says something that makes your jaw drops and then he winks at you. He still sends me twenty-five dollars every Xmas, like I was twelve not thirty(cough). This is because he pretty much missed out me and my brothers and my cousins when we were young. He's my mother's half-uncle, my grandfather's first son from his first wife - a german beauty he got pregnant during World War II. It's an interesting story. There's bad blood there. My ninety-year old grandmother only JUST came around to treating Johnny like family. She told him he when she dies he could have the shell tree he admired last time he visited her apartment. She told Johnny's wife he could have it now, if it makes him feel better.
But the doctor's say Johnny isn't going to get better. Weird thing is, they can't say exactly what is killing him - there's infection pushing his temperature up to dangerous levels, and pneumonia stealing the oxygen from his blood, and the combination of organ failure and the cocktail of drugs they have him on fucking with his blood pressure and... who the hell knows what. He's been sedated since they brought him in fighting last Wednesday. He's been on life support most of that time. The machine breathes for him.
While we were there last night, we watched his blood pressure plummet to dangerous low levels, which the doctors and interns decided was due to one or the other medicines they had given. They gave him something else, and it climbed. Meanwhile, his temperature dropped from 103 and change to 102.5. His body relaxed. My mother and her siblings seized on all of this as good news.
But the doctors are telling his wife there is no hope that Johnny will recover. They're giving him "a few more days". My mother told her the family will support her decision no matter what, but on the ride home my mother couldn't stop talking about how she came out of her coma after three weeks. Thirteen days really isn't a lot of time.
When my Mom was in a coma, the doctor's never said "there's no hope". What they said was "there's thirty-percent hope". Yes, they gave it a percentage. I feel like comparing comas is comparing apples and oranges, and pushing this on Johnny's wife will only make a hard decision harder. But I'm not choosing a camp. I've seen miracles. My mother did live. My father-in-law came back from the brink. My brother died in an instant. Who the hell knows.
All I know is, this is really sad. When I came to my computer this morning, the first picture in my slideshow was one of Johnny and his wife. I have to say, the odds are pretty fucking against that - out of a thousand pictures on this laptop, maybe three are of Johnny.
This is why I believe in more than the eye can see.
In the picture, Johnny was giving that winking-look. It reminds me of my grandfather, with his subtle sense of humor.
Honestly, though, what gives me peace is that if and when Johnny does die, he'll be in good company.