On Friday the 11th, apparently Mike's grandmother (Honey) went to wake up his grandfather (Papa), but he was nearly unresponsive. He could barely walk, he couldn't talk, and he looked like death warmed over. Mike's dad and brother immediately came over to drive him to the hospital where he had been seeking treatment already.
We found out that his blood oxygen level was in the 30's, when for healthy people it would be in the 90's. His brain wasn't getting any oxygen.
On Saturday, he was a little better, he was responsive, and his vitals had improved. But that didn't last very long. By Sunday he had been intubated because his lungs were filling with fluid and he was having a lot of difficulty breathing . We were told that he had pneumonia. The hospital had to sedate and paralyze him because he was continuing to wake up and fight against the breathing tube.
From Monday to Friday the 18th, his vitals wavered between sable and unstable, until Saturday, when the hospital told the family that there wasn't anything left to do. The pneumonia was shutting down his lungs, he was losing blood, and his body was riddled with infection. He was taken off the ventilator Saturday afternoon.
You guys, he was 65. And literally, like two months ago, healthy and big and loud. Even at Thanksgiving, once we knew about the Lymphona, he was still larger than life. He was an unholy pain in the ass, and he was one of those people who was supposed to live forever, if for no other reason than to tease and harass and make fun of you until he outlived you.
Yesterday was awful. I went to the hospital not really knowing that they were going to take him off the ventilator. I thought we were just visiting. Seeing Mike's grandmother lose the most important thing in her life was the worst experience of my life, to date. They lived for each other. They worked together, shared the same bed for 50 years, as she said, she doesn't know how to live without him.
I thought I handled everything well, until we left Mike's parents' and stopped at mine. I. Couldn't. Stop. Crying. When we got home, it kept up. Part of the problem was seeing MY parents, and thinking about Mike's mom, and part of the problem was that Mike wanted to spend the night at his parents' so that he could play video games with his brothers, and the thought of sleeping alone made me lose my shit. I'm a baby. And a jerk.
We miss you, John
