A new day begins

Yesterday my brother sent out an email with a picture of him and Beth.He had been inundated with texts, phone calls, emails. It was an easy and fast way for him to let all those who were hanging on to hope to know that it was over. The email said "today at 10 AM I said goodbye to my wife." A short statement, but one packed with a lifetime of memories, and fresh, raw painful emotions. After four days of almost continuously being at her bedside, it was time for him to step away, to let her go, to pick up and go on. We stayed with him, but he insisted we all go in and say our goodbyes, and that he would be last. There would be no disconnecting of anything because she would be going up to the OR for the harvesting of her organs. We declined to come back later that evening to see her again when all the tubes would be gone, and her body would be lifeless and still. The neurologists had declared her brain dead, and that is officially legal enough for the death certificate even though her heart was still beating. She probably had left us long before, but there always has to be an offical time listed.

We left the hospital on a bright, sunny day. The world outside of the University of Pennyslvania hospital was bustling. The world was going on, even though ours had just come to a grinding halt. Last night friends and family went over to Ed and Beth's bringing food....lots of food. Sandwich trays for at least a hundred people. People want to do something, and the most obvious thing is to feed you. It's ironic how food is the center of everything. We sat around the house for hours. Friends dropped by, there was laughter, tears, and lot of memories talked about. It was joyous and painful all at the same time. The kids are devastated, and this was the hardest part watching them crying, and seeing them wondering how their world is going to be now without the woman who was the center of their lives. Oh how Beth would have never wanted this to happen to them, would have never wanted them to feel this kind of pain. She was a protective mother, and a devoted mother. She cherished her role as a mother and she loved it. She tried to protect them from hurt, and all the bad things of the world. Sadly, she is not here to protect them now, and her absence is the source of all their pain. A sad reality, but a true one.Life has dealt them a bad hand to play.

I think the funeral will be Wednesday. The weather has turned warmer here and it's sunny and beautiful today. She would have loved this type of day. I started to think about what to wear for the funeral. When you are not at the weight you want to be, I find that any social circumstance can cause a panic as to what to wear. I'm not at all panicked. I would go in my sweats. I don't care. But I know there is a protocol, so to my closet I go. Please God, let there be something black and funeral like. I don't have the energy to shop. So I find the dress, tags still on in my closet. I had bought it awhile back from a website that was offering it at a discount. A very steep discount. I think it was from Gilt. I bought it because it looked like the kind of dress everyone should have in their closet. Perfect for business, casual....even funerals. But when I bought it, it didn't fit. It should have. It was the right size. But to send it back would have cost half of what the dress cost. So I kept it.

This morning I put it on. It zipped right up. I don't love it, but it looks nice. Black, simple, but perfect for a funeral. I felt happy that it fit, and happy that I don't have to go shopping. I really don't want to go shopping right now. So unless something changes, I know what I am going to wear on Wednesday.
Even in these sad circumstances, this pleased me, because I am trying to eat the right way, and another stress is not what I need right now. I don't want to try on fifty things to see what zips, what looks okay, or what won't make me look like a stuffed sausage. I thought to myself, in good times or bad, there is always that stress. What do I wear, does it fit, do I look okay? I'm nowhere near where I want to be, but I'm closer than I was. So one less thing for me to think about right now.

So now I am putting together photos, and planning to go over later and help me brother plan to lay his wife to rest. He is cremating her as that is what she wanted. And this summer we are going to scatter her ashes on a beautiful summer evening on the beach that she so loved. This makes it so much easier than picking out a casket, and cemetary plot, and tombstone. Anything to make it easier for him is a blessing.

Again, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your kind words of support and comfort. I would sit in that waiting room and look at  the emails on my phone and read something from one of you, and my heart just swelled with love and comfort. Those little posts kept me going because you all had no reason to care or cry along with me, but you did it out of the goodness inside of you. So many people, so much goodness coming to us. It helps.  God bless you all, and God bless Beth.

Now the hardest part of the journey begins

In my time of grief, I want you all to know that your thoughts, kind words, and prayers sent, have touched me deeply. I am hearing words of comfort from people that I didn't even know read my little blog.You don't really know me or Beth, or my family, and yet you have provided me with more comfort in your kind words then you will ever know. I  feel we do know each other and the connection of the human spirit can happen even from a distance. Our common interest of weight loss and eating healthy, have brought us together. And for that I am glad. I know this is supposed to be a blog about weight loss, but I don't care about losing weight right now. It's the furthest thing from my mind. If I never lose another pound....I don't care.

Surprisngly I saw a weight this morning when I got on the scale (what a habit that is, even during a time like this, it is still my habit) that I haven't seen in many, many years. There was a nanosecond of happiness, very fleeting, and then I didn't care again. I only care about Beth right now, and my brother and my niece and nephew who are waking up without a mom today. My pain can not even come close to theirs. So my thoughts are now turning to how I can make this a little easier for them.

We are going to the hospital this morning to say goodbye one last time. The final confirmation tests will be done that will show there is no hope. How can that be? Isn't there always supposed to be hope? Can't miracles happen? But I know that this is not the time for a miracle. Maybe the miracle is coming for those other families that are going through what we are going through, and hoping for an organ to save their loved ones life. Maybe Beth had to die so that some others could live. I have to keep saying these things to myself or I'm going to go crazy. This is not supposed to happen to a 43 year old woman. But we know it happens everyday, and I'm sure many of you reading have had bad things happen to good people.

So in parting, the only words of wisdom that I can think of are these. We are all on a journey. We will never know how long that journey will last, or when the end will be. When I saw Beth on Christmas day, I never even dreamed that she would be gone in less than two weeks. Would I have done anything differently if I could have know that?I wish I had one more day with her. I recently read a quote somewhere that said something like, treat everyone you meet as if this is their last day on earth. It could be. We'll never know.

Goodbye to an amazing woman.

The news is bad. Beth is not going to make it. Her brain is not showing any activity. She is still alive, but will not be soon. She is donating organs, so they will keep her going until they can take them. She is having final tests tomorrow. They go through alot of tests to make sure there is no hope of her brain functioning, and there is no brain activity so there are a few scheduled for tomorrow, but it is just a formality at this point. and we knew early today that the end is near. My brother went home today to tell the kids. He is coming back tomorrow to, as he said,to hug and kiss my wife and tell her I love her one more time while she is alive. He does not want to be there when the plugs are pulled, although with the organ donation, they do not go through that until the organs are harvested. The kids don't want to see their mom like this either, nor do my parents. Every one has to deal with this in their own way. It has been a long, long, draining day today.  We're all talked out, prayed out, cried out...although the tears do keep surfacing.This is one of the saddest things I've ever had to go through or watch someone go through. 

A letter to Beth.

Please indulge me this letter that I wrote to Beth tonight. I have to get some of these bottled up feelings out. I am distraught, scared, tired and all prayed out. But what she is going through is a million times worse.

January 4, 2011

Dear Beth:

Tonight you are lying in an intensive care unit at the University of Pennsylvania. You have had a massive heart attack due to a dissection of a blood vessel to your left ventricle. It is not something that you could have seen coming or known about. It is rare. You are clinging to life, and even as a nurse, I can’t ever remember seeing this many tubes, pumps, IV’s and monitors on a person. This is as bad as it gets. You had open heart surgery yesterday at Chester County hospital. You had a cardiac arrest as they tried to perform a cardiac cath, which showed two blocked vessels to your left ventricle. That is the piece of the heart that pumps the oxygenated blood out to your body. They took you right to the OR and did two bypasses. Your heart did not start beating so they put you on a Ventricular Assist Device. You made it through the night and woke up and showed some signs of responding. Then they sedated you again and flew you by helicopter down to the University of Pennsylvania. They had planned to put a more permanent LVAD pump in, but found you were having some problems with your lungs. It turns out you had a hole between the two atriums of your heart. We all have it as babies, but yours did not close after birth. It happens in about 1 in 4 people. But having this pump was causing fluid to go into the hole and back into the lung. Your lungs weren’t functioning properly. The surgeon found this and repaired it. Your heart is now beating on its own. But you have not awakened, and that is what we are waiting for. You have been heavily sedated, so it may take a little longer. You have a tube in your groin that helps your heart pump, you are on a ventilator to breath, you have chest tubes, and many IV lines going into your neck. You are very ill and we are all very scared.

We are talking to you, but not sure if you can hear us. It breaks my heart to hear Ed tell you to hang in there, and that he needs you and the kids need you and to keep fighting. You must be tired, but we beg you to come back to us. We all need and love you so much. We don’t know if you can hear us, but we talk anyway, just in case. Everyone is so frightened that you may leave us.  You are so ill, and have been through so much. We wonder how much more you can take, but we pray you can take a lot more and recover. We can’t let you go. I love you so much and I need you in my world as we all do, especially Jensen and Matthew, and Ed. Ed is suffering to watch you go through all of this. If you could only see and hear how much he loves you. It breaks my heart. He is unable to sleep or eat. He is just out of sorts, and so emotionally spent.  I have never seen my big, strong, brother like this. Just raw emotion.

Please come back to us. Please fight hard even though you are exhausted and your body is beat and broken. I can’t imagine never seeing you again, or hearing your laugh, or sharing a glass of wine on the beach with you. I love you. We all love you. Please get better, please fight to stay here with us. I hope someday you will read this, and be back to your life that you love so much. Back to being with your family. You didn’t deserve this. You are too young to go through this. Please be okay.
I love you so much,

Pattie

Update

Thank you all so much for the kind words, prayers and good wishes. I am typing this on my brothers ipad from the University of Pennsylvania family waiting room for cardiovascular intensive care patients. Beth was flown here by helicopter this morning. She had another open heart surgery this morning. She is critical, but stable, although there have been a few scary moments. Now she needs to wake up and respond so they can assess any neurological damage. It means the world to Me that you hear from so many of you words of support and comfort.

Today Is me weigh in day. I'm almost hesitant to report that I am down 7 lbs since last week. Absurd I know. I'm just reporting what the scale said. Probably last week was a false high due to some water retention, and probably this week is from barely eating for the last two days. I have no appetite. It's so weird. I always thought I was a stress eater, but this is life and death stress and it makes my stomach feel like it's in knots.I don't have anything to write because I'm barely eating. I'm committed though and wrote down my goals. Our family crisis has sidetracked me but I'm still focused on meeting my goals this year.

This horrible thing that has happened to Beth, has given me a clarity about things, and a glimpse of how fragile life is and how it can change in an instant. I also see that many of the things i stress about are not so important. I want to be healthy for myself and my family. There are no guarantees in life, but we can buy ourselves more days of healthy living, by eating right and getting to a healthy weight.

Sending blessings and big thankful hugs to all of you. Hug someone you love tonight and please keep praying for Beth to recover.

Send prayers please!

Hello my dear friends. I am sitting here ar 11:30 at night, having just returned from being at the hospital for the last 8 hours. My beloved sister-in-law had a heart attack today at age 43. She is not a smoker, is not overweight and has no family history. She had a sort of dissecting aneurysm where the wall of the blood vessel pulls apart and clots form. The doctor said he never saw this happen before like this in that area of the heart. It is not something she could have prevented.She had emergency open heart surgery, but arrested on the table when they were doing the cardiac cath. She is on a ventilator and a left ventricular assisted device to help her left ventricle pump. Her heart was not pumping when they took her off the heart lung machine after surgery.

Please send prayers, happy thoughts or whatever positive forces you can for Beth. She has an 11 year old son and a 15 year old daughter. My brother is in so much pain, as no one is sure what is going to happen next. If her heart can not start beating, then she will have to have a transplant. But first we have to get her through tonight and make sure she has brain function and that her lungs are ok. She is too young and too vibrant to have this happen. I can't stop crying. Please pray for Beth. I won't be blogging for awhile as my family needs all of my time and attention. I will let you know how she is doing when I can. I need hugs today, so please send any extra you have.

Welcome 2012!

Happy New Year to all my friends. It's a brand new, shiny new year, and it got me to thinking. It's funny how with the changing of the clock, one day turns into the next, and with it, all the anticipation, excitement, goals and hope for the future are placed in this new day, of this new year. I always write down everything that I want to accomplish as the year changes, in hopes that I will be a better, leaner, more balanced, well read, calmer, hydrated, more rested person. I want to be perfect. I want to lose weight, exercise more, read daily, catch up with friends, learn to meditate, stress less and move more. I have high hopes and actually start out thinking I will change all these things I don't like about myself or my life, and I will change them all in one day.  But with age, comes wisdom, and I realize that change of any kind is  a process....often a slow process. It takes time, it takes patience and it takes perserverance. A long list of goals can be overwhelming. It's alot of changes to make all at once.

So as we enter into this brand new spanking clean new year, I plan to write down all the goals that I want to accomplish, but one of these goals will be to take it slow, to give myself time to change and to live in the moment.  When there is a day that I slip up, or I don't ________ ( fill in the blank here), I will pick up where I left off, and carry on again towards my goals the very next moment. All will not be lost,  and I will not be a failure, as long as I am moving forward. Every new day is really like the start of a new year. It's a clean slate every single morning, and a new beginning whenever we want it. Not just because the year changed.

 To help me remember this, I plan to refer to the following quote. I copied this off a friends facebook page, and I'd like to share it with you. It's a quote from Dr. Wayne Dyer.

 "Forget about those New Year’s resolutions in which you decide on the first day of January how you will be conducting your life for the next twelve months. Instead, set up day-to-day goals for yourself, and then resolve to begin living with present moment awareness for the rest of your life. When you get good at living your present moments one day at a time, you’ll see yourself changing right before your own surprised eyes. Remember, anyone can do anything for just one day, so tune out the sentences that keep you locked into your old self-defeating ways and begin to enjoy each day of your bright new year."

Sending big Happy New Year hugs to you all. Wishing you a bright and happy new year. May all your dreams come true!