He died of severe pneumonia.
I wish I had been blogging every day since last week because something new seems to happen every day. I was going to blog about current events and then go back and relive that horrible weekend at a later date. Because I need to put it in writing. I just need to. But after talking to someone last night who was unclear about his death because my last blog aluded to liver disease, I want to write it now. I will just have several posts of what has been going on.
When I last blogged, Geoff had been sick for over a month. He kept getting worse. On Thursday the 14th, my mom called me at 5 in a panic because the ambulance had taken him away and she needed gas in her car to get to the hospital and did I know if Jake was around. (She has NEVER pumped gas. She does not know how to.) She said he was coughing up foul, vile smelling stuff and made her puke and when the EMT's got there, they opened all the windows and doors. The promptly announced he had pneumonia, worked on him a bit and took him away. I left work as quickly as I could. I just had this awful, AWFUL feeling in my stomach. I had to go to the ER and see him for myself.
When I got there, he was hooked up to oxygen and even so, his SAT level was 92-94. He kept taking the oxygen mask off, causing it to rapidly drop below 88 and setting alarms off. They were going to admit him for severe pneumonia and run lots of tests on him. He kept yelling at both of us to quit staring at him and go home. That he would be fine. I stayed for about a half hour. As I was leaving, I almost just decided to sit in the ER waiting room until he got admitted to the regular room. I should have. Saying goodbye then was the last time he spoke to me.
My mom called me a little after 9 to tell me that she had left a little before 8. That Geoff was still having tests in the ER and kept insisting that she go home. The hospital had just called her and the CT scan showed a massive mass of infection in his lungs and instead of going to a regular room, he was in the ICU. They wanted to put a chest tube in him to drain the infection and wanted her permission since it was a procedure with risks. Then she called at 2 to say the Dr just called her and said that he had taken a turn for the worse and she should come to the hospital because they weren't sure if he would make it through the night. He was on full life support and in a medically induced come, mostly because he was fighting the ventilator and they needed his body in full rest.
Soooo, I hadn't told either girl about him going to the hospital. I was going to wait until Friday evening when they were both home and we knew exactly what was going on. Karli was at a friends house for the evening and Kallyn had to work Friday and I knew she'd freak about him being in the hospital. But for me to leave at 2 am to drive my mom to the hospital, there was no way around not telling her. So the 3 of us went. I chose to not wake Karli at 2. I asked Jake to get her at 6. Things really went bad for a little bit right before she got to the hospital and for a few minutes I thought I might have made a really bad decision to wait.
And wait was what we did. The doctors did not give us much hope. Kallyn was the one with all of the hope. She was by his bed quite a lot, egging him on. Cheering him on. They told us that there is scientific proof that when in the medically induced coma that they can still feel their loved ones. That they can really feel touch. They while they can't understand what is being said, they can hear voices and be comforted. Kallyn asked the Dr point blank if she had ever seen anyone that sick live and the Dr said "Yes, but I can tell you their names, that is how few." She was not mean or abrubt about it, she was very caring. Kallyn said "Well, get ready to add another name to your list." That was Friday. Saturday morning he was s l i g h t l y better. Not enough to cheer about but enough to give the Dr's themselves some hope. They told Kallyn to keep doing whatever she was doing. The whole time my mom was what I would call "pessimistic", but the Dr called "realistic". And I was in the middle, trying to smooth everyone over. The Dr's said we were all a good balance.
We basically moved into the ICU waiting room. The coffee and pop machines were empty for 2 days. I got them fixed. All of the magazine racks were empty. My mom filled them. No one cleaned the room for 2 days. I left a note on the housekeepers supply closet and it got done. My mom rearranged the waiting room and watered the plants. Jake ran back & forth to let my mom's dog out & to feed our animals.
Sunday was a roller coaster. His fever stayed between 103-105.4. They kept him mostly naked with ice packs on him. In the A.M. they started slowly taking him off the paralytic and putting him on heavy morphine. The nurses say he was responding by moving his eyebrows. My mom was all excited. She was acting like he was a real coma patient coming out of it because he could respond to her. To me, I was thinking he had to be scared as hell and in pain. He was being awakened into hell. And he did start to get agitated and they had to raise his blood pressure medication again. Oh ya, his blood pressure was so low that he was on the maximum doseage of 3 different blood pressure meds. What they desperately needed to do was surgery on him. Open him up and physically take out the infection. But he needed to be more stable. Then they gave him morphine to sedate him instead. The Dr told us he had to be in a great amount of pain with the 2 chest tubes in him and the ventilator tube and the infection. I didn't think she needed to tell us that. We counted the IV bags going into him once, and there were 17!
Then the end sort of happened quickly. I'm not sure what time my mom came in from visiting him and said she couldn't watch anymore. That his Sats were dropping and too many people were working on him. I ran back there and there were 6 people running around. Someone was actually bagging him. I just sunk into the arm of the chair that was there. His good friend Tom was sitting in the chair, just stairing at them. He had been down to 70% oxygen at one point during the day but he was back up to 100% and his Sat levels was all over the place in the 80's, then dropping to 70's. His blood pressure was dropping. They change shifts at 7 but his main Dr was still around with another patient having a crisis. The new shift Dr was scared to do anything but still trying stuff. They kept paging the other Dr STAT. It was unreal. Something you see on a TV show that makes you cry, but it was real life. Someone I loved. Then the Dr finally came. My mom came back and she started screaming that no one had come to get her. I thought she couldn't be there but she didn't realize it was SO bad. The Dr looked at my mom and said she was going to do one more chest xray to see if she could see anything she could do. She said "You are not making any decisions. I am not making any decisons. The decision has already been made." She said if she didn't see anything in the chest xray then she was going to give him a lot of morhine to make him comfortable and take the ventilator tube out of him... and see what happened. My mom asked how long after the tube came out and the answer was "minutes at the most, it's really up to his body." She did the xray, looked across the bed at us and shook her head. Then she came over, crying, and hugged my mom and told her how sorry she was.
I am so thankful that they silented the alarms on the monitor so we did not have to hear that final beeeeeeeeep at the end. It as all silent and peaceful. I did happen to be right there when the nurse came in to check the monitor when it as almost 0. I can say that I watched someone die. I have kissed a dead person... and I do NOT. DO. NOT. want to do it again any time soon.
He was 53 years old and if he had health insurance I am 95% certain he would still be alive today. I would like to scream that to all the fricken people out there against national health insurance or socialized helth insurance, whatever you call it. 45,000 people die in the U.S. each year because they do not have health insurance. My step father has become part of that statistic.
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