Currently listening to: Zombie – The Cranberries
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into nearly a month. I spent most of my days at the hospital living in the waiting room or in my dad’s room in the ICU. My mom and I alternated where we slept while my brother took care of the logistics at home and kept the rest of our relatives abreast of what was happening. I looked like I was homeless, camping out at the hospital and intermittently going home to shower and get a change of clothes.
The surgeons wanted to perform a procedure called TIPS (transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt) because he was still hemorrhaging and his blood pressure was unstable due to the portal hypertension and complications. This meant that they would place a shunt going directly from the portal vein into the hepatic vein, which would relieve the high blood pressure.
The radiologist would would need to make an incision in his jugular vein and thread it past the heart and down into the liver. He would also require a tracheostomy, an incision made into the neck and trachea to allow the air to reach the lungs through a tube that would be inserted into the opening.
Surgery was scheduled for the next morning and none of us were able to sleep that night. I know that with any surgery, there are risks. I just hoped that since he was still young that it would be in his favor and that we would have a successful outcome. We needed this to work so we could take the next step towards rehabilitation. We were running out of options.
Morning came and they wheeled him into the operating room. As we were praying with my parent’s pastor, within fifteen minutes the doctors came out of the operating room. Their heads hung down while talking to us and said somberly that they would not be able to proceed with the tracheostomy or the TIPS. They slowly continued to tell us about how they made a small incision on his throat and discovered that the blood was not clotting. If they went on with the surgery, he would hemorrhage to death and that was not a risk they were willing to take. They were one hundred percent certain that he would die on the table if they did. Fucking coagulopathy. Fucking liver. Fuck…
Now what were we supposed to do? I was desperate. He was getting around the clock blood transfusions…it’s been nearly a month and he has still been in a coma. Nothing was getting better. Nothing was working. I asked for them to schedule an EEG. I needed to know…
The EEG was completed and the nurse, not the doctor, told me what the results were. There was no brain activity. The brain functioning had stopped…impending death was on the horizon. Deep down inside, I already knew this was true, when I had done a cranial nerve examination…when they attempted to wean him off the ventilator and failed…the way he looked lifeless in the hospital bed…my head was spinning and ready to implode. This was confirmation that I did not want.
I requested a family meeting with the healthcare team. They set one up the following afternoon between all of his physicians, social worker, chaplain, and us. The ten of us were seated in the conference room. They were rather direct with us as to my dad’s condition, prognosis, and told us our options. We could either continue what we were doing or terminal weaning…remove the ventilator.
He would not regain consciousness. His condition was not reversible. There would be zero chance of recovery without artificial life support. Brain death..is death.
My mom and I were in health care and understood the dire situation. When we decided on the terminal weaning, my brother flew into a rage and told us that we were killing him and that we were murderers. He screamed and said that he would never forgive us if we went forward with our decision.
I burst into tears because I was fatigued, frustrated with my brother, and grieving. My mom tried to console my brother, he is her favorite after all. I walked away from the both of them and went back into my dad’s private room and held his hand and wept.
…no one is getting out of this life alive…
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