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edenfallingThis entry seems to not be cross-posting from Dreamwidth. I will cross-post it manually for now, and delete the duplicate if LJ starts talking to Dreamwidth again.
I got up at 6am this morning, and we left the island around 7:20 -- it would have been 7:15 except for issues with low water and getting the boat out of the shore station (in other words, my dad had this brilliant idea that didn't quite work as advertised *sigh*). I slept through most of our drive down to the Twin Cities.
We had lunch with Ardis, who is now off at physical therapy (very long story -- it starts with a still obscure malady in France a few years ago, continues through a heart attack in Croatia, and includes a lot of shoulder and back problems en route). My parents have gone off to St. Paul to shop; I declined, since I am trying to be frugal these days and going to a good bookstore would be somewhat counterproductive. Instead, I printed out my boarding passes for tomorrow and am now checking news and such online.
The hospital, it turns out, has never had a case with my Uncle Bob's particular complications. As they are a teaching hospital (University of Minnesota hospital system) and as they are very interested in knowing what exactly went wrong so they may have a chance to do better with the next patient presenting this set of complications, they are autopsying his body. Then he will be cremated. The memorial service with be October 3rd or 10th, in Virginia.
Currently Aunt Jan and my cousin Brian are packing up the apartment she and Bob had been sharing until he was readmitted to the hospital a couple weeks ago, and which she had been inhabiting solo since then. They will come over to Ardis's house for dinner, after which we may all drive over to the University campus to help sort and pack various things.
This still doesn't feel fully real to me. I mean, I just talked to Bob on Thursday night. I brought him a get well card that I picked out as I sorted through the singleton discards AO weeded out of the card racks at the smoke shop. It was a funny card. He smiled.
That very night, everything went to hell, and by the next morning he was in a coma.
Ardis tells me that Jan asked about waking him to say goodbye, but the doctor said that when that's been done, the patients have typically been very confused and in pain, almost panicking, so he advised against it. And they had said goodbye when he agreed to be put into the coma on Friday, so Jan left it at that. The hospital had a chaplain come into the room and do a little service before the ventilator was turned off, for closure. They stopped the machines around noon, and about half an hour later, Bob was dead.
Ardis says this is unimaginably better than what happened when my grandfather died -- when a nurse came into the room, said something to the effect of, "His heart stopped; that's the end," and just pulled the power cord with no warning. Ardis was horrified at the time. I am horrified hearing about it now -- I was not given any details at the time, probably because I was only twelve years old.
Either this hospital is better than that one was, or the medical profession has learned something about patient relations in the intervening fifteen years.
But my uncle is still dead. Dead is dead is dead.
I keep writing that and it keeps failing to feel real. Just like I couldn't make a proper mental image of him with most of his hair fallen out, I can't make a proper mental map of a world in which he is dead. In which I will never talk to him again. In which I will never hear his voice, never listen to his awful jokes that he told so mildly and with such quiet glee, never see him stand back and show off a project he finished, never receive another photograph of him and my aunt in some new outlandish vacation destination.
They had planned to spend two months in Alaska last summer, before he was diagnosed with MDS. They never got to finish that trip. And now he never will.
...
My Uncle Bob is dead.
What is anyone supposed to do with that?
I got up at 6am this morning, and we left the island around 7:20 -- it would have been 7:15 except for issues with low water and getting the boat out of the shore station (in other words, my dad had this brilliant idea that didn't quite work as advertised *sigh*). I slept through most of our drive down to the Twin Cities.
We had lunch with Ardis, who is now off at physical therapy (very long story -- it starts with a still obscure malady in France a few years ago, continues through a heart attack in Croatia, and includes a lot of shoulder and back problems en route). My parents have gone off to St. Paul to shop; I declined, since I am trying to be frugal these days and going to a good bookstore would be somewhat counterproductive. Instead, I printed out my boarding passes for tomorrow and am now checking news and such online.
The hospital, it turns out, has never had a case with my Uncle Bob's particular complications. As they are a teaching hospital (University of Minnesota hospital system) and as they are very interested in knowing what exactly went wrong so they may have a chance to do better with the next patient presenting this set of complications, they are autopsying his body. Then he will be cremated. The memorial service with be October 3rd or 10th, in Virginia.
Currently Aunt Jan and my cousin Brian are packing up the apartment she and Bob had been sharing until he was readmitted to the hospital a couple weeks ago, and which she had been inhabiting solo since then. They will come over to Ardis's house for dinner, after which we may all drive over to the University campus to help sort and pack various things.
This still doesn't feel fully real to me. I mean, I just talked to Bob on Thursday night. I brought him a get well card that I picked out as I sorted through the singleton discards AO weeded out of the card racks at the smoke shop. It was a funny card. He smiled.
That very night, everything went to hell, and by the next morning he was in a coma.
Ardis tells me that Jan asked about waking him to say goodbye, but the doctor said that when that's been done, the patients have typically been very confused and in pain, almost panicking, so he advised against it. And they had said goodbye when he agreed to be put into the coma on Friday, so Jan left it at that. The hospital had a chaplain come into the room and do a little service before the ventilator was turned off, for closure. They stopped the machines around noon, and about half an hour later, Bob was dead.
Ardis says this is unimaginably better than what happened when my grandfather died -- when a nurse came into the room, said something to the effect of, "His heart stopped; that's the end," and just pulled the power cord with no warning. Ardis was horrified at the time. I am horrified hearing about it now -- I was not given any details at the time, probably because I was only twelve years old.
Either this hospital is better than that one was, or the medical profession has learned something about patient relations in the intervening fifteen years.
But my uncle is still dead. Dead is dead is dead.
I keep writing that and it keeps failing to feel real. Just like I couldn't make a proper mental image of him with most of his hair fallen out, I can't make a proper mental map of a world in which he is dead. In which I will never talk to him again. In which I will never hear his voice, never listen to his awful jokes that he told so mildly and with such quiet glee, never see him stand back and show off a project he finished, never receive another photograph of him and my aunt in some new outlandish vacation destination.
They had planned to spend two months in Alaska last summer, before he was diagnosed with MDS. They never got to finish that trip. And now he never will.
...
My Uncle Bob is dead.
What is anyone supposed to do with that?
