Sad news
The following post was from my original blog on ronincyberpunk.com, it is archived here for posterity purposes
Yesterday we took my mother off of life support and she left this world for the next. The support from friends and family has been astonishing, though as I told a friend, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I've been managing the blog we kept for mom while she underwent the transplant and I wrote the entry yesterday, here it is:
Day 248 ~ She is at Rest
Today is a very sad day. Patrick here, to deliver the saddest of news.
Mom's oxygen numbers plummeted over night. Dad received a call at 3:30am saying that we were needed at the hospital. Her condition had finally worsened such that no machine could bring her oxygen levels up again. Around 11am we had the most difficult discussion of my life.
Going into this mom and dad had made the decision to fight to the end but no further. They would try everything they could to get mom better, but they would not prolong it unnecessarily. And before intubating mom, they had a long discussion going over it all again and making sure that they, the nurses, and the legal requirements were all on the same page and in order.
At 11am we all unanimously agreed that the time had come. At approximately 1:30pm we took mom off of life support and she left this world to enter the next.
There will be a memorial service for mom on Sunday, March 18th at 4pm. It will be at our church, Presbyterian Church of the Lakes. There will not be a viewing or a burial. It was her wishes to be cremated, but her body's final resting place has not been decided yet. We know it's short notice for the memorial service, but with the majority of the family all ready in Orlando, dad is trying to be considerate of them.
We know people who can't be there may wish to send flowers or make donations. We decided to encourage the donation of flowers given that mom had to avoid them for the past eight months.
If you'd like to make a charitable donation, we recommend the MPD Foundation, which funds research into the family of diseases which mom had.
There will be future updates to the blog, we will discuss in more detail the last month and the time in the hospital. Dad wants to discuss what exactly happened, what errors were made and how they might be side-stepped by others who might follow a similar path.
Just recently I began counting hits to mom's blog, she's averaged over 400 hits a day in the days I've been tracking. And using that as a benchmark as to visits to her blog, she's had over 100,000 visits to her blog in the time since it began.
Our entire family wishes to thank you all for your support, well wishes, financial aid, and love.
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