Lets hope I can get through this.
Thursday July 21st started like any normal day..well normal for the last month. Got up, got a good report from the nurse, went to work. Found out I was able to take a 2 hr lunch break instead of 1 and I was pumped! I got to go spend 2 hours with my love in the middle of the day! The morning sped past and finally it was noon. I darted out of work and to the hospital. I got there and Joe was awake. He was looking good, his numbers were strong. He had a slight fever and was sweating a little but the nurse said it wasnt something they were concerned about and Joe was a natural sweater. We had an amazing visit. I had ordered a blanket made especially for him and we had been talking about it all week. It had finally came in and I told him and he smiled. I planned to go home after work and pick it up and bring it to him. We watched a video of our princess crawling all over and he smiled again. He held my hand and actually squeezed it so hard that it hurt. He was moving his legs and mouthing words. He was telling me he wanted to go home and I said "dont worry baby were going home soon" and he smiled. He told me he loved me several times and when i would say it back he would just smile. He gave me the eyebrow raise which was something only we did to each other. I dont know where it came from but it was our thing. Then it was time for me to leave :( So I told him to take a nap and I would be back! He of course said no but I think he listened to me anyway. This is 1:15pm when I leave. I go back to work GLOWING. I was so happy that my world was coming back together.
3:30 comes around. I get this phone call at work. Its Joes mom. She tells me something is wrong and I need to get to the hospital right away. So of course my work puts up a mini issue with this and finally by about 3:50 I get outta there. I am to the hospital by about 4:10pm. I get there and Joes dad who had been with him that afternoon says he had an episode and they didnt know what effect it would have. He started to get restless this afternoon and couldnt get his breathing rate down. He was breathing about 60 breaths a minute, which is way too many. This caused him to turn a slight shade of purple and his heart rate went up to 200. His o2 percent was droppping and his temp was sitting at about 105.5. He couldnt get any of it down. They put him back under sedation and paralyzed him again and turned the respirator up all the way. The temp was just not coming down and his heart rate was having a hard time slowing. He was having a hard time keeping his body oxygenated even with the machine doing all the work. I couldnt stop crying. I was not ready to loose him and I was not settling for that answer. So, we met with the drs and they told us his chances were not good. He was not making enough improvement and staying at those improvement levels to be considered stable and he was going backwards. They didnt think he would ever live off of a vent or out of assisted living. This is not something Joe would have wanted. It would have killed him to be like that. They couldnt guarentee that he would live on the machine through the night, and if he did they couldnt promise his brain wouldnt be damaged from this episode. This is about 5:30pm. They left us alone( me his parents and his brother & his wife and his sister) and we had to make a decision. I dont remember much of the conversation except tears. Somehow the decision was made to turn the vent off and let joe go naturally. I didnt, and still dont, know how I was going to live without him and didnt know how to say goodbye. So we all went in individually to say our goodbyes. I went in and he was already starting to turn a shade of blue and he looked miserable. That wasnt my Joe anymore. The nurses had gotten really close to us on this journey and one of my fav nurses was in there and she just held me while I cried. Then it was just me and the body of the man I love. I talked to him, told him he absolutely had to be around for every minute of mine and alexis's life and he needed to let me know that this was what was best and he was in a better place. His heart rate slowed just a little, and it hadnt since the episode, this was him telling me he was at peace and he was going to be okay I just know it. The family came back in and we sat with Joe for hours. We never left his side. 10:00pm came and it was time to start the process. By this point, the Joe I knew and loved I strongly believe was watching from up above. He was gone. His skin was blue and he was freezing while his temp was in the upper 101 area. He was completely unresponsive when the nurse suctioned his mouth. At this point I am sobbing and have somehow ended up in his lap on the bed. I just wanted to get right next to him and pretend this wasnt happening. She turned the machine off around 10:29 and his heart stopped beating around 10:32. The sound that I remember so well from laying on his chest, the sound that made my life complete was gone and so was the love of my life. I really couldnt accept it. A doctor came in and pronounced him dead and those words were enough to kill me too. My baby was gone. The only person Ive ever loved, my best friend, my other half was no longer on the same planet as me.
The rest of the night, all i remember is tears. lots and lots of tears. I will never be the same.
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