Thank you for the kind words
Thank you for the kind words
Those of you who knew me on the board know that I haven't been around in over six months. Kathy's illness became so consuming after her relapse from a bone marrow transplant in January that there was no time or energy.
I did try to keep in touch with a few of you but even those attempts became fewer and far between.
Since January Kathy had been in the hospital five or six months. Imagine! I can't and I was going to the hospital every day after work bringing her dinner, spending several hours, going home and trying to get necessary things done at home.. then getting up and doing it all over again for months at a time. She did have a month out of the hospital once or twice during that time.
But after going back into the hospital in June she had multiple relapses following chemo. Contracted pneumonia and spent 10 days in ICU, bounced back .. had more chemo and then got another monster infecton that this time didn't respond well to the antibiotics. Also the chemo that she most recently had didn't work all that well so they did it again.
OH WELL... THIS time I think (know) that the chemo worked so well that it killed ALL her bone marrow. She did NOT bounce back. Her white counts remained low.. her normal blood , red cells and platelets .. none of it came back properly. Instead she just got more nasty leukemic cells.. Then she got that nasty infection Clostridium and then Strep. which just overwhelmed her system. The strongest antibiotics available could not eradictae the infecton.
Over the past three weeks I have seen my wife slowly die. I was called on Saturday morning to allow removal of all active medication and blood products, to allow comfort care only (morphine and saline) and to let her go. I felt that I needed to consult with her mother who lives nearby and her sister from CT before making that decisions.
But since she continued to decline so rapidly and came to be in serious pain with not real hope of coming back (we had agreed no heroic measures... and giving 6 units of blood a day, two units of platelets, frozen packed plasma plus antibiotics.. etc with no good results.. became to be considered "heroic measures" andwas futile.
I gave permission for comfort care on Monday morning. Kathy passed away yesterday (Wednesday) morning.
It is with great sorrow and grief that I tell you this.
I am very distrought, sick and numb. Although Kathy had been sick for a very long time. I loved her very much and so hoped for this to work.
Thanks for your support
Love to all
AzRusty
Randy