Everything's Different Now

The horrible truth is that Dad is dead now. The call came at 6 a.m. Ginger said she was in the ER with Dad and that it didn't look good.

I should have known that meant it was even worse than that. He had really already died. I think now he never woke up. He was in a fatal arythmia, causing his body to gasp for breath, his eyes unfocused, unanswering.

She called 9-1-1, then did CPR for 7 minutes until EMS arrived. At this point it took them 30 minutes to stabilize him in order to be able to transfer him to the ambulance.

His heart did beat then, it's true. But he never could breathe and have his heart beat again without help. As Dad would have wished, Ginger was going to remove him from life support pretty quickly.

Then the hospital staff suggested that since Dad was so young - 66 - and that he was so healthy - having run almost 50 marathons and being in training currently - that they would try hypothermia therapy. They cooled his body down from 24 hours so that it wouldn't have to work, in the hopes that it would give his system the rest it would need to minimize damage and let him start again. They began the warm up process at that point.

I was in the room, right next to him, Aunt Katrina beside me, Grams behind us. I saw the heart monitor drop from 43 to 39 to 27 beats per minute. Then it jumped back up to the 40's, then dropped again, and a nurse came into the room. Then the monitor said VF in red, and the nurse said, "Ok, he's having some fatal arythmia right now. Where is his wife?"

Ginger had already told us that if he entered this state again, she would "call the code," "do not resuscitate."

Sadly, Ginger had just gone to lunch ironically for a birthday meal with her daughters, my husband, and son. We had all been in good spirits because Dad had showed signs of improving.

My aunt called Ginger on her cell as I called her daughter.

The staff were waiting. Ginger was coming up the stairs. I met her at the door to ICU. She asked, "Is he gone?" I replied, "They're waiting for you."

When she got there they told her the situation quickly, and she asked for them to try to resuscitate once more.

Twelve adults swarmed the room as we left it.

Ginger, Aunt Katrina, Grams, and I stood in a tight circle with our arms around each other, crying, wailing, calling out, praying.

The rest of the family came up and surrounded us.

Dad didn't get better.

Ginger looked at us, paced, pulled at her hair, and said, "Call the code."

And that was it. He was gone. We were there.