May 31 - Joy got a phone call from the nursing home where her mother, Elona Joy Floyd, had been living. Her mother was having trouble breathing and had been sent to the ICU. This had happened a few other times to her over the last few years so we were not overly worried, but offered prayers for her and let the family know. This all happened during our home Sabbath worship - Superstar got to pass the sacrament to the people in the foyer, as we put it. The phone call ended just as I finished my talk on resilience in hard times so she could give hers.
June 1 - Around 9:30am the hospital called. Normally Elona (or anyone else) would have been responding to treatment by this point, but she wasn't. She was going downhill very fast and it was clear to the doctor that some very difficult decisions had to be made. Joy assembled DeWayne, Doug, and Fran on a group text, but had difficulty reaching Dustin - her brothers and sister. The question was whether they should a) put her on a ventilator in an induced coma to keep her alive and not in as much pain, b) leave her on the CPAP machine until people could come to say goodbye, or c) allow her to pass on from this world.
Joy: "In hindsight, I realize that the doctor wanted the decision to already have been made. But it was a really hard decision for us and it took us until about 11 to make the decision. At first I was hesitant to turn off the machines until we had talked to Dustin, but both DeWayne and Doug were leaning towards letting her go. We prayed about it together on the phone before talking to Fran. DeWayne said it would be okay to wait until we could talk to Dustin. I think after we talked to Dustin we should have just let her go. Dustin started sending me texts, because he was out of area on his phone and couldn't call. But there wasn't any direction. He was pretty much saying 'I don't know.'
"Eventually we got everybody on the phone. As DeWayne and Doug and Fran and Dustin all talked about their feelings, I remembered going to visit my mom when she stopped taking her medications and how she revived in a couple days. I started seeing the truth in my heart of what the doctor had said about her not reviving and how that meant it was a more permanent state. So eventually I started feeling like she wouldn't want to live the way she was living in the hospital either. I joined them in the decision to let her go."
Hearing all this, I called the children together to pray for Elona and for Joy and her brothers and sister that they would make the right decision for Elona. In between conversations, Joy and I discussed the possibility of all of us going up to Utah for the funeral. Around 11 I told the kids it was 90% certain we were driving up as soon as we could get out of the house and started them packing their clothes. By 11:30 it was certain and while Joy made preparations with her family, I was working with the kids to get everything packed as quickly as possible. I threw all the food I could conveniently carry into a couple suitcases and the cooler, gathered 3 days' of clothing for everyone and a Sunday outfit, and had the kids gather fun things to do. I hurried out to return Superstar's saxophone and something that belonged to the school, and by the time I got back nearly everything was together. We left by 3pm with the intent to drive straight through to Ogden and Logan - a journey of 21 hours or so.
Superstar ~ For the past few days we had been making some plans for what we would do next week. We had finally gotten everything readied when we were starting to do the beginning of the schedule, but then we had to pack and leave for a weeklong trip. That was kind of inconvenient.~
Joy: "Absolutely. Princess was going to take a pair of STAAR tests for school."
Superstar ~We had a new 'point schedule' for fun. We had figured out what I was going to do daily.
Superstar ~Along the way we got to use some DSs and watched movies and sometimes read the family book. The rest of the time we just read our own books or looked out the window of the car or something like that. When it came to night time, it was very hard to get to sleep. I didn't get to sleep until like 1 or 2am. I'm pretty glad that the seats could recline!~
I had the silly idea that I would get some work done during the night hours and so I spent time focusing on the kids instead during the daytime. But while I drove Joy would get phone and text messages from family and ward members, so the kids had a little less interaction from us than they normally would. I got us up to midnight and Joy took the 12am-5am shift as I dozed. It was a wonder to me that we made it so safely and with so little trouble. Joy even managed a short nap during the morning once I spelled her.
Joy was surprised when she heard from Doug that someone had the idea they were keeping Elona live until DeWayne and we could get there. When DeWayne arrived, he asked the hospital staff if it was customary to leave someone on CPAP when the family had said to disconnect her, when it was clear she was in so much pain. The staff and doctor were relieved to hear that - they had wanted to stop treatment earlier as well. There must have been a miscommunication somewhere about why we were hurrying to Utah. After confirming again that we wanted Elona to not be in pain
Joy: "They let me listen in while DeWayne gave Mom a blessing. Then he talked to the nurse about disconnecting her machines. That was around 1am. She died about 2:13am on June 2."
June 1 - Around 9:30am the hospital called. Normally Elona (or anyone else) would have been responding to treatment by this point, but she wasn't. She was going downhill very fast and it was clear to the doctor that some very difficult decisions had to be made. Joy assembled DeWayne, Doug, and Fran on a group text, but had difficulty reaching Dustin - her brothers and sister. The question was whether they should a) put her on a ventilator in an induced coma to keep her alive and not in as much pain, b) leave her on the CPAP machine until people could come to say goodbye, or c) allow her to pass on from this world.
Joy: "In hindsight, I realize that the doctor wanted the decision to already have been made. But it was a really hard decision for us and it took us until about 11 to make the decision. At first I was hesitant to turn off the machines until we had talked to Dustin, but both DeWayne and Doug were leaning towards letting her go. We prayed about it together on the phone before talking to Fran. DeWayne said it would be okay to wait until we could talk to Dustin. I think after we talked to Dustin we should have just let her go. Dustin started sending me texts, because he was out of area on his phone and couldn't call. But there wasn't any direction. He was pretty much saying 'I don't know.'
"Eventually we got everybody on the phone. As DeWayne and Doug and Fran and Dustin all talked about their feelings, I remembered going to visit my mom when she stopped taking her medications and how she revived in a couple days. I started seeing the truth in my heart of what the doctor had said about her not reviving and how that meant it was a more permanent state. So eventually I started feeling like she wouldn't want to live the way she was living in the hospital either. I joined them in the decision to let her go."
Hearing all this, I called the children together to pray for Elona and for Joy and her brothers and sister that they would make the right decision for Elona. In between conversations, Joy and I discussed the possibility of all of us going up to Utah for the funeral. Around 11 I told the kids it was 90% certain we were driving up as soon as we could get out of the house and started them packing their clothes. By 11:30 it was certain and while Joy made preparations with her family, I was working with the kids to get everything packed as quickly as possible. I threw all the food I could conveniently carry into a couple suitcases and the cooler, gathered 3 days' of clothing for everyone and a Sunday outfit, and had the kids gather fun things to do. I hurried out to return Superstar's saxophone and something that belonged to the school, and by the time I got back nearly everything was together. We left by 3pm with the intent to drive straight through to Ogden and Logan - a journey of 21 hours or so.
Superstar ~ For the past few days we had been making some plans for what we would do next week. We had finally gotten everything readied when we were starting to do the beginning of the schedule, but then we had to pack and leave for a weeklong trip. That was kind of inconvenient.~
Joy: "Absolutely. Princess was going to take a pair of STAAR tests for school."
Superstar ~We had a new 'point schedule' for fun. We had figured out what I was going to do daily.
Superstar ~Along the way we got to use some DSs and watched movies and sometimes read the family book. The rest of the time we just read our own books or looked out the window of the car or something like that. When it came to night time, it was very hard to get to sleep. I didn't get to sleep until like 1 or 2am. I'm pretty glad that the seats could recline!~
I had the silly idea that I would get some work done during the night hours and so I spent time focusing on the kids instead during the daytime. But while I drove Joy would get phone and text messages from family and ward members, so the kids had a little less interaction from us than they normally would. I got us up to midnight and Joy took the 12am-5am shift as I dozed. It was a wonder to me that we made it so safely and with so little trouble. Joy even managed a short nap during the morning once I spelled her.
Joy was surprised when she heard from Doug that someone had the idea they were keeping Elona live until DeWayne and we could get there. When DeWayne arrived, he asked the hospital staff if it was customary to leave someone on CPAP when the family had said to disconnect her, when it was clear she was in so much pain. The staff and doctor were relieved to hear that - they had wanted to stop treatment earlier as well. There must have been a miscommunication somewhere about why we were hurrying to Utah. After confirming again that we wanted Elona to not be in pain
Joy: "They let me listen in while DeWayne gave Mom a blessing. Then he talked to the nurse about disconnecting her machines. That was around 1am. She died about 2:13am on June 2."
No comments:
Post a Comment