Sudden Death in the Family
Saturday morning as I sat down to post items to Alovelything.com we got a call from my sister-in-law. My husband’s brother was on his way to the hospital. He was having seizures, was on a ventilator and unconscious.
After several hours of what seemed like nothing (perhaps doctors were working behind the scenes, but they certainly didn’t communicate with the family), the ER doctors at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs sent him via ambulance to Swedish in Denver where a special operation was to take place.
Once at Swedish, the neurosurgeon there advised us that the surgery was not advised. My husband’s brother had an aneurysm and blood clot in his brain stem. The very, very best case scenario of surgery would be complete paralysis — not even being able to blink — and a fully functional brain. The medical term for that condition is “locked in”.
The family knew that my husband’s brother would never want to live like that. So, the ventilator was removed and he died at 4:30 in the morning on Sunday. He never regained consciousness.
For all purposes, he really died at home during the seizure. Had the EMT’s arrived just a few minutes later, he would have officially died then. The EMT’s instantly put him on a ventilator without permission from his wife.
Sometime in a future post I’d like to hash out my feelings about that.
