I was so glad to see 2015 go and try to start the new year fresh. With all of my own health issues from the migraines in 2015 that several people didn't believe, or thought I was using them to take advantage of to get out of doing things; then my brand new 21 year old daughter in law being diagnosed with aggressive Stage 2 Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma two months after marrying my son and having to give up her dream of attending USC as a student to instead attend USC's Cancer Treatment Center to try and save her life; several hospital admissions for her due to obliterated white counts from the aggressive chemotherapy; to me being tested for possible stroke due to the migraines only to find out it's something else that's migraine induced; I was really looking forward to a clean fresh start in the new year.
That optimism continued until 11:30 pm on January 7th when I got a call from my step-brother saying my dad had had a massive heart attack at Costco earlier, the medics had done CPR and it didn't look good for him at the ER. How soon could I make it down there? After getting my daughter to drive home in the middle of the foggy night from school, and going to and from the hospital for the next two days, we finally had to face the decision to take dad off the ventilator - too much brain damage from lack of oxygen waiting to first responders to arrive even though CPR was tried manually.
I thought the hardest thing I had ever done was saying goodbye to my mom right after she died from breast cancer, and dealing with my two miscarriages, but holding my dad's hand as he passed away has by far been the hardest.
The only good thing, if there can be one, is dad was an organ donor so in a way he's living on. If you haven't considered being an organ donor, consider it. www.dnwest.org
