So I was sitting here tonight, thinking about my parents, and I decided to write a blog about them. I know a lot of people may not know that both of my parents have passed away and this is a way I can share there stories, because I know people don't want to ask after I have just told them.
My dad died when I was 16. He had chronic lymphositic leukemia. It is basically cancer of the lymphocytes or blood. He had it for 6 years. When he was getting worse, my parents went to MD Anderson hospital in Huston, Texas to see what treatment he could get there. Unfortunately, the day after he got there they found out he was bleeding internally and weren't able to do any tests. My mom made the decision to air ambulance him back home to Springfield, where we finally found a doctor that would accept him as a patient (his previous doctor wouldn't take him back, and I have always hated that doctor since then) My dad was a big guy. He was 6'2'' and probably 280's. He was solid! Very strong. He was a semi mechanic so he had to be! So when I went to Springfield to see him the nurse told me that I probably wouldn't recognize him and I thought she was nuts. I mean I knew who my dad was. When I walked into his room, I almost walked back out thinking I had the wrong room. She was right, I didn't hardly recognize him. He weighted around 140 lbs. His skin just was hanging off his bones. He asked me how his truck was (that he had bought for me not long before he left) After that, he didn't talk very much. He would hallucinate from pain meds and get agitated because he was in so much pain. I wasn't there when he died, but my mom and his mom and sister were. My poor mom had such a hard time with it for a long time and I didn't know or could imagine what she was going though. She would take anxiety medications and I knew that and just didn't think much of it. I soon learned how she felt because after she died, I ended up taking anxiety medication. I can remember leaving to go out with my friends and he saying she was going to take her medication and try to go to bed. If I even knew a little of how she felt, I would have NEVER left her. I am so scared when I have panic attacks and the last thing I want is to be left alone. It still hurts me and bothers me that I left her when she needed me. I just wish I would have known.
The day my dad died, we finally got home late, and I went to bed and I had just turned out my light and was just laying there and I felt something sit down on my bed and shake my shoulder. I sat up and turned on the light and nothing was there. It scared me so bad that I slept with my mom for a year! But I think it was just my dad telling me he was ok. That is how he used to wake me up in the mornings. When he had his funeral, we went into the church and it was sunny and no clouds were in the sky, when we came out to go to the cemetery it was pouring rain and storming. It rained all the way until the burial service was over and then it stopped. His nickname was Storm.
My mom died when I was 23. She died of sarcodosis. It is an autoimmune disease and it attacked her lungs and left scar tissue. Only 3% of people who have sarcodosis die from it. Usually you just get a spot of it, and it goes away. Her's was progressive. She also had asthma, COPD (never smoked a day in her life) and chronic brochitis. She struggled to breath for years. A couple of years after my dad died, her health started to deteriorate. She was in and out of the hospital, usually at least 2 times a year, usually for pneumonia. She was put on oxygen which was hard for her. She had to carry around an oxygen tank everywhere she went. At home she had an oxygen concentrator that used normal air. The last time she went into the hospital shortly after Christmas 2006 she was in for a long time. The ended up sending her to a nursing home for rehab because she just wasn't strong enough to go home yet. She was only there for about 12 hours before she was ambulanced back to the hospital because she couldn't breathe. It was the middle of the night and I went and she said she was ok and I should go home. So I did. A nurse called me the next morning around 6 and said that she was being moved to intermediate care, and a little later she was moved to ICU. Then I got a call saying that she was being put on a ventilator. I can't even describe what I thought in that moment. I called Becky (my mom #2 and her beset friend) and she came with me to the hospital. I have never been more scared in my life. She was critical and I can remember her long time doctor struggling to tell me that she probably wasn't going to make it. She stayed on the ventilator and seemed to be making some improvement. We developed a method of her spelling out letters in my hand to tell me things because she was too weak to even hold a pencil. Eventually she got to the point where she could write and she would write messages to us. She even was going for a couple hours a day without being on the vent. There was talk of her going to St. Louis to a rehab facility that would rehab her and get her off the vent. On Friday I left her in good spirits. She developed a secondary infection and a call early in the morning told me that I needed to come ASAP. The nurse, who was really fond of her, told me that she said she wanted to be taken off the vent. That she was tired of fighting. It was unbelievably hard to hear and Becky and her sister were mad because they thought she was giving up, but I understood why. She had fought and fought for so many years and she was tired. I can't imagine how hard that decision was for her, but I think she knew it was one she wanted to make so I didn't have to. As she wished she was taken off the vent on Sunday afternoon and she died Monday morning around 11am. I don't wish on ANYONE to have to watch someone they love struggle to breath and die in front of their eyes. It was the worse thing I have ever been through in my life. My mom was my best friend. After I got through the funeral and everything I went to the doctor to get some medication to help me. The guy I was dating at the time broke up with me maybe about a month after she died. I nearly had a nervous breakdown. This is why I say I wish I knew what my mom was going through. I was a wreck. I couldn't eat or sleep or function. I stayed with Becky and Steve for a while and eventually I got better. We ended up getting back together and when we broke up the last time, it was on Mother's Day because he couldn't understand why I was acting the way I was. I didn't even care that time.
When my mom died I quit going to church because I was furious. I was so mad that she had been taken away from me and that my dad was gone too that I just quit. About 4 months after she died, I had this really strong urge to go back to church, so I did. And I couldn't wait to go back the next Sunday. I picked up a bulletin on my way out and when I got home I looked at it and saw an ad for Catholic Match. So I decided why not, so I looked at it and that's how I found Joe. To say that my mom had something to do with that is an understatement. From very early on in our relationship I can remember thinking how much it was going to suck because my parent's weren't going to be able to be there. And it did, but not nearly as much as them not being here to see Luke. To know that Luke will never be able to meet my parents just breaks my heart. They were two such amazing people, not a day goes by that I don't think of them.
So anyway that's there story, for anyone who ever wondered and didn't ask
