No real reason, just wasn’t exactly feeling inspired I suppose. I am still reading daily and my routine and life haven’t changed much at all.
It’s wet in my part of Alabama, not raining…at the moment but the wetness from the few days we got still hasn’t abated.
I’m sat in my yard, in my favourite chair, I’ve spent a bit of time with my bare feet on the wet mushy ground, the cold wetness hugging my feet as I ‘ground’ myself. I’m listening to Redbirds chirping and the sound of an extremely distant delivery truck backing up and a dog barking half a mile away. The breeze rustles the dead leaves in the trees above me and the ferns clinging to the branches of the tree to my left, and the hairs on my arm which are stood on end because of the briskness of the air. There is a plane somewhere in the distance, an old bomber by the sounds of it, ambling its way invisibly along the horizon. My chickens have finally decided the hawks overhead are a threat, perhaps…or perhaps someone has simply laid a late afternoon egg and has shared the joy with half my flock…who knows?
It’s February, the month I lost my sweetheart, piece at a time. A year ago today we had chemo at some point, I drove him 5 days a week until the unfortunate surgery that started the torturous week and a half until his death. Can’t tell you anything we talked about, can tell you usually he was drained on way home and slept, can also tell you we often had to stop to take over a public restroom. He wasn’t eating much, if at all by this point. I was sad because it felt like he’d already checked out somewhat. He was trying but I don’t think it was himself he was trying for. I miss him, but I’m sad he went through as much as he did, if it was only on my behalf.
I digress, I am at a loss on what more to write at this time.
2023 has been a mixed bag for me. Some of my highest highs and some of my lowest lows. But mostly a lot of smaller ups and downs.
I lost my beautiful husband and couldn’t get anyone to take my case against what I feel is a horrible hospital with a lot of horrible practices; who I believe caused my husbands death, not his cancer process.
I’ve started back to an Eastern Orthodox Christian church, in Montgomery. It’s small and I feel at home there mostly. I’m glad to have fellowship with even a small church.
I’ve done a lot of gratitude journaling in the last year, a lot of studying the concepts of manifestation and have come back to the same conclusion each time…it’s ALL God, I don’t need a process or a book to teach me to talk to Him more.
Sure, a journal helps in the whole mindfulness aspect of things, but past that, a lot of the books I’ve read have rubbed me wrong because they don’t feel true to God, they feel alien to me, so I grab what I need and I dismiss the parts I don’t feel feel like Him.
Ive prepped a garden and spent a good part of the year working towards clearing the overgrown parts of my land. I’ve killed the John Deere riding mower more than I care to tell you, I’ve given the greenworks zero a turn a run for her money. I spend a lot more time outdoors between the land and my animals (4 goats, 3 dogs, and 24 chickens, minus the 3 indoor kitties).
I’ve dated a man mostly quietly since late June early July. It’s not a relationship that anyone anywhere is going to write a bestselling love story about…but he’s pleasant and makes me smile and laugh: I’m glad he’s in my life.
I intend on 2024 being a year of heavy blogging for me as well as a lot more soul searching and following my own paths. So this is one last post to close out 2023, and tell you I look forward to adventuring with you in 2024.
lol I finished my post and had closed it out, and was done playing with the land for the day, but this came on and changed my mind:
Im going to tell you a story, about my husbands last 2 weeks, his death, how I see things, what I saw and why it breaks my heart that I cannot get a lawyer to take my case because the way the law is written in Alabama on wrongful death, and medical malpractice doesn’t favor anyone or protect anyone, except the Hospitals, and Dr’s.
On February 15 of this year…2023, my husband went in for surgery to see whether his turn or had grown back through his airway, check his stent, etc. once surgery was done, his surgeon , Dr.Aliñe Zouk, took me into a room, told me the surgery went well, and that the tumor has not grown back into his airway, and they made a decision to remove his stems that had been placed in January. She also told me he had a hole in his lung, a fistula, and that they did not know where said fistula led, but she did not have any great concerns on this and felt I could bring him for a CT scan any day in the next week for follow up. She showed me a photo of the fistula, I could not tell size on her phone but I didn’t estimate it to be of concern based on Dr. Zouk’s demeanor.
After his surgery, my husband had a slower time in recovery than usual, and they had to use a non-rebreather mask to get his oxygen levels up to the needed levels for him to go to the second recovery. My husband was notably perturbed over the nonrebreather , and his O2 sats still kept dropping every little bit, after they let me join him, I feel this should have caused more concern than it did based on the fistula. They pushed him to recovery 2, which rushed us to dress him and get out the door, despite a noted O2 sat drop upon arrival to recovery 2. (Another red flag ignored).
Once home, my husband was exhausted, to be expected after the day he had, but when he went to take a drink of water, he choked horribly. He asked me to wait until morning and give him another chance to swallow before going back to hospital. (He hated being there). I agreed, and we tried to rest.
The next morning he had another violent choking episode when trying to take a drink, so I took him to the emergency department at UAB, and wrote Dr. Zouk with out concerns. We were told he would be admitted after several hours in the emergency department, and that it would be 60-72 hours before they got him a room. I went home to get a few errands done, as there wasn’t much I could do there and the rooms in the ER are tiny and very unaccommodating. My husband and I talked via text until about 6:14 that evening at which time I was driving home from errands and he got pulled for a CT scan somewhere between there and 7:50 as I got called and told he was not very responsive and his O2 sats had dropped, and asked if I wished to intubate, which I confirmed I did. I was not told until several days later that he’d had a reflux episode and aspiration while in the CT machine. I had only been told the unresponsive and O2 sat drop.
Once in his room, the nurse updated me on his status and essentially told me that it would be best for me to wait until morning to come in to see my husband, I was there about 630 in the morning and they had him intubated only on one side, because of the hole and needing to put the lung stent back in. They did that during the course of the day. Another surgery to wait through. (This hospital didn’t do a very good job of updating you, though they said they would, and they never seemed to have a clear understanding of where my husband was during any of his surgeries).
During the morning, I reviewed my husbands medical records on his portal provided by the hospital and saw that they had a type/cross and match done, understood that meant he’d received blood overnight, not asked nor disclosed to me during the night. When I inquired, It was confirmed, and I could hear the younger nurse ask the older nurse how I knew that once I went back in his room.
After surgery, they had his intubation in both lungs and it was doing fine, no extraneous noises from the time he returned from surgery until I went home. On my way home, the nurse called to tell me that they had moved his intubation back per the surgeons request, as it was overlapping the stent.
The next morning, he had a new noise that sounded like a loud frog croaking, the doctors who rounded seemed puzzled by this over the weekend shift, adjusting his tubing and the inflatable cuff, suctioning and even adjusting the machinery because nothing seemed to fix the issue. (Sundays daytime nurse stayed well clear of his room and refused to suction him even when he’d coughed around the machine hard enough to blow the end of the tubing off, shooting copious amounts of mucus into himself and his bedding)
They didn’t seem to understand the issue, and it wasn’t formally stated or understood until Monday morning , when Dr. Micah Whitson rounded and without a second thought, told every doctor im his group that he knew that noise, told them he was certain that the fistula in his lung led to and opened into his esophagus, and that there was a back and forth flow, or communication there. He explained it to me and told me they would be scheduling him for surgery to stent the esophageal side, but shortly after mentioned, Dr Micah told me that they would not be doing the surgery because they felt it would compromise the area between the 2 stents.
Tuesday, Dr micah told me they would be doing the surgery with pulmonary in the room to pull the lung stent if they deemed it necessary once the esophagus stent was placed. Somewhere communication broke down from that conversation though and one of the parties wasn’t available for the surgery.
Wednesday, I was told again that we would be having the surgery on Thursday morning, I spent the night and was back and forth all night while they sent me out of the room to do his IV lines and get things in place, paperwork was signed and I was counseled on what to expect…but once again, no surgery ever tooI place.
That afternoon (Thursday) , around 1:45 pm, the nurses turned him on his side to clean him up some, while they had him on his side he made a horrifying guttural noise. His nurse told him calmly that they’d have him flipped over in a moment, but by the time they repositioned him on his back, they realized a need to suction, at that time pulling a large amount of staff into the room, bagging him, suctioning nearly 2 full suction containers (think large sodas from a fast food place) of bile and stomach acid out of his lungs.
At this point, I believe the surgery was no longer an option, for back of a better way to describe it, my husbands lungs had suffered a severe chemical wash in his own body fluids, the very thing the surgery was supposed to have prevented occurring, and his lungs abilities to pull oxygen into his body were severely damaged and depleted in one fell swoop.
They added new meds to his IV drips, ketamine being one of them (ketamine is a horse tranquilizer and is known to cause renal failure). Shortly after I left for home this evening, I was called and told his renal function had plummeted, and that they were going to try a med and would let me know in the morning whether there was any improvement, I was called before bed and told his numbers did improve with that med, meaning I didn’t have to answer about dialysis this evening. I came home and went to bed (I’d been at the hospital since 6 am the day before, it was now 9 at night.
945ish my phone rang, a Dr was calling to tell me that his blood gasses were going downhill rapidly, there was no way I could safely make it back in at that time on so little sleep, and having just been woken, and panicked about him, I went into an anxiety attack myself. My pulse was racing at 165-170, and the Dr on the other end of the phone simply told me over and over that she could not give me medical advice…she called 911 on me and an ambulance came and checked on me, sat in my front yard with me until I got my bearings.
Friday, my husbands brothers and their wives were both in, all pushing me to essentially end his life. I allowed the hospital to start lowering his meds, but got to a point late in the day where I panicked, I talked my options out with Dr. Whitson and told me they’d leave his meds at a level to sustain him, but once he declined, I had to agree there would be no more upping the meds to save him. Any choice was taken out of my hands at that point, I went home to sleep, came back the next day and sat with him all day until my parents came to take me home,
I was not to be called if anything happened overnight because of the anxiety attacks it caused me, but when I woke the morning of the 27th, I knew my husband was already gone, As my sister in law posted it on Facebook. Still my parents accompanied me in where it was confirmed, I was given the information to release his body to a funeral home.
I feel a lot of wrong was done, I can tell you when they lifted his sedation, he was still himself and able to communicate with me, he didn’t want a DNR in case he died during the surgery that never happened, he was my sweetheart and my best friend.
Puddle Jumping with Pandora's Box 