When I arrived at the hospital, I was taken to a chair outside of the treatment room unable to see Joe immediately. According to my cell phone log, I called Marla at 5:00 a.m. and asked her to come - telling her that Joe was dying. She came and she held my hand and cradled me and loved me. Somewhere, sometime, she had contacted the Bishop and he and Cordell showed up. When I did see Joe, he was wired and plugged up to so many, many machines and unconscious. He was able to have a final priesthood blessing given to him by Cordell who was our friend, our home teacher and someone who dearly loved Joe and did anything and everything I'd ever asked him to do to help with Joe. I remember sitting next to Marla, holding hands, while the blessing was given. I heard nothing of it though due to the noises in his room and my crying. I just knew though that Joe was truly in God's hands at this point and I knew it was very, very serious. I just knew that my mind could not and did not want to comprehend what was happening. But, I knew Joe was in good hands and that I was too.
Eventually he was moved to the ICU. I sat next to his bed and held his hand. When I kissed it one time, his head came up and his eyes opened and I just knew the priesthood blessing had healed him. But sadly, I was informed it was not a sign of healing, but rather his brain starving for air and this was something like a muscle reflex. They eventually became so frequent and detrimental to him that a body paralyzing medication was given.
It was originally thought that perhaps there might be some recovery and discussion was spoken about putting him into a cooling coma for 24 hours to determine if his brain would be functional. However, just before that procedure was put into place, a mini miracle took place. His cardiologist - Dr. Novick, his neurologist - Dr. Wheeler and his nephrologist - Dr. Cotant all happened to have been on the same floor, at the same time and all heard about Joe and came to check on him. Dr. Novick ran a program tape connected with Joe's pacemaker to determine how long he'd been without oxygen and compare it with the 911 records. It was determined that Joe had died approximately 1 minute before I entered the room and that he'd gone for several minutes without oxygen. Therefore, if he did happen to regain consciousness, he would in all likelihood be in a vegetative state and unable to care for himself.
So, a consultation took place between these three doctors who had cared for Joe many times in the last two years, as well as the admitting doctor. They then came to me and told me that there recommendation would be to take him off life support. I looked at each one of them in the eye and asked them that if that was their husband or their father lying there would they do that and each one nodded or said yes.
----------------------------------------------------------
I came to realize on that day how fortunate the mini-miracle was regarding the doctors. But I also remembered a saying that I'd heard many years ago which is...
There is no such thing as coincidence. It's just God's way of remaining anonymous.
No comments:
Post a Comment